last updated: 11/07/05
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Spring 2006
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LATIN 13-012: Elementary Latin II (1) (Knorr) |
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LATIN 232: Latin Poetry: Catullus, Carmina
(1) (Knorr) |
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| LATIN 360 (4th
Sem Latin) Readings in Pliny's Letters
(1) (Williams) TTh 3:30p-5:00p ETN 307 + 1 hour TBA This course meets concurrently three hours a week with CLAS/HIST 249 "Ruling the Early Roman Empire". One hour a week in addition will be devoted to reading extracts from Pliny's colection of letters in the original Latin. Students will also read extracts from secondary literature concerning the classical epistolary tradition, focusing on both the generic features of letters and letter-collections and on the social-political claims implicit in a publication of letters. The particular features of Pliny’s own life and letters will be brought out – his purchase of a statue, his portraits of contemporaries, and his presentation of his life as a married man – while the stylistic features of his Latin will be emphasized and contrasted with that of his contemporaries Tacitus and Martial. Pliny was not writing history or satire, and his letters present him as a relaxed, composed man of the world. Close attention to the construction of this image will make clear the value of letter collections in understanding a complex society. For more information on Pliny the Younger, click here. Prerequisites: Latin 231. Required Textbook: M. Fischer and M. Griffin (eds.), Selections from Pliny's Letters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973 (ISBN 0521202981, $ 14.95). |
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| Greek | |||
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GREEK 132 Elementary Ancient Greek II (1)
(Bachvarova) |
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| GREEK 232
Ancient Greek Poetry (1)
(Bachvarova) MWF 1:50p-2:50p, ETN 105 Interested students will have the opportunity to read one of the most wonderful works ever written, Homer's Odyssey. Prerequisite: Greek 231. |
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| Hebrew |
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HEBR 132 Elementary Classical Hebrew II
(McCreery) |
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| HEBR 232 Intermediate Classical
Hebrew II (McCreery) MWF 12:40p-1:40p, ETN 108 Reading and translation of selected passages from the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some of the finer points of Hebrew grammar, poetry, orthography will be examined. Prerequisites: Elementary Classical Hebrew I and II (open to Freshmen with good Hebrew background). |
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| Classes
in the Classical Studies Program |
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CLAS 171 (IT; 4th
Sem Latin and Greek) CLOSED Required
Textbooks: |
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| CLAS/REL
226 (IT) Lives of the Desert Saints (1) (Williams) TTh 11:20a-12:50p WLT 21 The later Roman empire and the early medieval world saw the creation of a radical new form of Christian piety in the lives of the desert fathers: pioneering monks and independent holy men such as Anthony of Egypt, Paul of Thebes, Pachomius, and Simon the Stylite. This course will examine the lives of these desert saints with two main aims: first, to understand the social world from which monks and ascetics emerged and which they (sometimes violently) rejected; second, to read the lives of the saints as they were recorded by contemporaries, and through them to gain an understanding of the whole subsequent genre of hagiography. The course will therefore draw attention to the complex interaction of miracle stories, historical claims, and religious exhortations which characterize these lives, and to the extent to which these lives - like the saints themselves - opposed, exploited, or criticized the social conventions of their time. Interpreting Texts. Required Textbooks: Carolinne White (tr.), Early Christian Lives (Penguin Classics) London: Penguin, 1998 (ISBN: 0140435263, $ 15). Norman Russell, (tr.), Lives of the Desert Fathers: The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, with an introduction by Benedicta Ward (Cistercian Studies No. 34). Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981 (ISBN: 0879079347, $ 12.95). |
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| CLAS/HIST
249 (US) Ruling the Early Roman Empire (1) (Williams) CLOSED TTh 3:30p-5:00p ETN 307 In the second century AD, Pliny the Younger was sent by the Emperor Trajan as a troubleshooter to investigate the finances and government of the Roman province of Bithynia. This course will focus on the letters that Pliny sent back to Trajan reporting on what he found, and on Trajan's replies; it will also make use of the many other letters that Pliny sent to built a rounded understanding of the problems and difficulties of administering - and often simply living in - the early Roman empire. Pliny's letters reveal the interaction between the central administration and the independent local councils, and between the Roman authorities and the pirates, bandits, slaves, and Christians who inhabited the further provinces; and in general they provide empirical data from which it is possible to reconstruct a persuasive image of the workings of a complex and sophisticated pre-modern society. They also allow an insight into the wealth, habits, and cultural interests of the Roman aristocracy who, whether telling ghost stories, setting up statues to themselves, or sacrificing their leisure (and sometimes, like Pliny's uncle, their lives) for a literary reputation, still considered themselvs the real rulers of the Roman empire. For more information on Pliny the Younger, click here. Required Textbooks: Pliny the Younger, The Letters of the Younger Pliny, tr. Betty Radice (Penguin Classics) London: Penguin, 1963 (and later reprints) (ISBN: 0140441271, $ 14.00). Fergus Millar, Rome, the Greek World, and the East: Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire (Studies in the History of Greece and Rome), Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004 (ISBN: 0807855200, $ 29.95). |
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| CLAS/WGS
260 (IT, 4th Sem. Greek) Gender and Sexuality in Greek Society (1)
(Bachvarova) MWF 12:40p-1:40p ETN 106 CLOSED This course explores Greek attitudes towards gender roles and sexuality, drawing on primary medical texts, tragedy, comedy, didactic poetry, forensic speeches, the romantic novel, philosophy, early lyric poetry, and secondary scholarship about these texts. Topics include gender construction, misogyny, hysteria, virginity, marriage, rape, seduction, inheritance, female and male desire, homosexuality, and rites of passage. Required Textbooks: TBA |
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 Demosthenes
(384-322 B.C.E.) |
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RHET 231-01 Classical
Rhetoric (1) (Clark) We will be looking at why the Greeks and Romans were so anxious to master the skills of persuasion at the same time they feared that power. We talk about the obligations of citizenship and why this led to the development of a "grammar" of the rhetorical act. We model forensic, deliberative and epideictic speeches by Pericles, Demosthenes, and Cicero, among others. |
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Sir
Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Catullus at Lesbia's (1865)
Acropolis in Athens
Herodian
Lamp 
