AS and A level Classical Civilisation

Classical Civilisation has been a well-established and popular course at BMS for many years. From September 2009, we shall be following the AQA specification.

At AS it consists of a study of two areas:

  Homer's Iliad - a story from the Trojan War

  Greek Architecture and Sculpture

At A2, we study two further units:

  Greek Tragedy - we read four plays by the playwrights Sophocles and Euripides

  Virgil's Aeneid - the story of the Trojan prince Aeneas' escape from Troy and journey to

  Italy

Each unit consists of a 1 hour and 30 minutes examination and is worth 25% of the total qualification. In the examination, students are expected to answer essay questions of varying lengths.

Lessons take the form of discussion, reading and note-taking.

Prospective students are not expected to have a GCSE qualification in Classical Civilisation, but we would normally expect them to have achieved at least a grade B in either English Literature or History before entry to the course.