To live in antiquity was to live in a world populated by a multiplicity of entities: human, animal, plant, and mineral, alongside angelic, divine, and demonic beings. But how were distinctions made between who was what? On what grounds, for instance, was one type of creature considered a human, and another an animal? Were classifications hierarchical with divinity at the top? To what extent did people think of the human as a category of its own? What kinds of creatures were considered proper members of their species? To what extent did distinctions of disability, race, gender, and sexuality factor into such classifications? As they do today, such decisions had profoundly political and social consequences for how different beings and lives mattered. We will approach these questions on two levels. First, we will sound them out through ancient sources: medicine, natural history, ethnography, religious texts. Second, we will read select scholarship and consider how historians have approached such sources and themes.

Intended Audience:

All first-year students are welcome