This paper discusses the teaching of Ancient History in Brazil through the experience of Projeto Vocabulário Político da Antiguidade (Political Vocabulary of Antiquity Project). This project has been developed at the Federal University of Paraíba in João Pessoa, Brazil, since 2016, with a team consisting of professors and students from undergraduate History and Classics programs. The project’s main goal is to create didactical materials that facilitate the teaching of politics and Antiquity to students aged 11 to 17, based on the translation of Greek and Latin texts. This paper will present two educational games developed by this project to teach the theory of forms of government in an engaging and enjoyable way. The positive results of the project highlight the importance of modernizing the teaching of forms of government regbased on the works of authors such as Herodotus, Aristotle, Polybius and Cicero. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the study of Antiquity can effectively contribute to the political awareness of young citizens.

Teaching introductory courses on the ancient world is a study in reviewing a vast field of material without compromising on nuance. It is a tightrope walk, especially when beginning a teaching career. Comedy and economics are topics often parsed in more advanced courses to engage the primary source materials and modern debates with appropriate depth of analysis. However, their place in the introductory classroom is an essential aspect of understanding the ancient Greek world fully. Especially as students often struggle to find ancient comedy amusing upon first interaction, teaching these topics is a process of trial and error for the professor, who is often constrained by their own exposure to these topics. This article shares a classroom activity on comedy and economic institutions designed for the introductory class, engaging students by activating prior knowledge and practicing close reading of a selection from an ancient text.

Plutarch considers that the texts of the classical tradition with which young people come into contact from a very young age have many flaws, in terms of the ideology, the moral issues they deal with, the standards they project, and the decision-making they demonstrate. His admission of this is also the reason that leads him to devote a large part of his treatise to investigating the nature of poetry and how readers and teachers can correct, evaluate, and make positive use of the moral phenomena found in it. For him, poetry has a purely moral–pedagogical character as it exerts a direct influence on the human soul and mind. This last statement of his is confirmed in an undeniable way in practice, as the entire educational world recognises literature as the most suitable means of education and training. In ‘How to study poetry’, the philosopher does not want to moralise or manipulate the reader’s thinking, but rather give them the opportunity to decide for themselves the actions they will take to achieve the ultimate reading pleasure and benefit. In the present article, his pedagogical concepts meet with modern literary theories in a unique way, which makes reading them an interesting process.