DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS

The course is a general history survey, starting with Rome’s humble beginnings and ending with the collapse of the Roman Empire. It will trace the story of how a small city-state in central Italy, on the periphery of the older civilizations of Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, established military and political dominance over Italy; how it built a Mediterranean empire and administered it for centuries; how a long period of crisis led to its decline and partition into an eastern and western half; and finally, how the western half collapsed. In addition to this chronological narrative, the course will treat several key themes and concepts in Roman culture. The Roman military will receive attention, as will gender relations and public spectacles. Roman religion and the role of slavery will also be discussed.

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By conducting a critical survey of the main literary sources available for the study of Rome from her mythic foundation to the establishment of the Republic, this course provides a wide-ranging exploration of how the history of early Rome was shaped through centuries.  While exploring the genesis and development of the legendary traditions concerning the beginnings of Rome, students will engage questions which are central to understanding the politics of Roman identity at various stages of the city's growth and expansion. What do the stories of Aeneas, Romulus and Remus, the Sabine women, the rape of Lucretia and the expulsion of the kings from Rome tell us about the way the Romans of the Republican and Early Imperial ages conceived of their past? How and with what results did these legends aim at providing mythic justification for the centrality of Rome to the history of the Mediterranean world? Besides examining the historical and political dynamics which account for the fluid, multifaceted, at times even conflicting nature of the literary tradition, students will learn about important archaeological discoveries of the last half-century which have revolutionized our thinking about the origins of Rome.

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Did the Greeks and Romans believe in their myths? How was ancient religion practiced day in and day out? What role did the rites and rules of cult worship play in regulating the lives of citizens and non-citizens, like women and slaves? This course offers an introduction to how religious beliefs and practices shaped life in the ancient Mediterranean by combining literary, material, and comparative evidence. In the second half of the quarter, we take a deeper dive into two religious rites practiced by societal Others—the worship of Bacchus by noble women and the lifelong service to Cybele by castrated priests—and how the high visibility of these norm-breaking individuals in literature lay bare the anxieties of the elite male citizenry.

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This course is the third and final element of the second-year Greek series. In this course we will read significant sections of Homer’s Iliad in the original language. Students will develop an ability to read the Homeric dialect and gain an understanding of the conventions of ancient epic poetry. As we explore the earliest European literary work we will also survey several important scholarly issues regarding the nature and history of the poem, including the nature of its composition and its place in ancient Greek society.

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The third quarter of second-year Latin combines literary analysis with mastery of grammar and syntax at the intermediate level. This is mainly a workshop course, with discussion focusing on questions to and from members of the course. Though translation will be a component in evaluation, it will be a relatively minor criterion of success. The main topics of discussion will be how meaning and emphasis are communicated throughout the poetry of Catullus.

Though Latin 201-3 concentrates on language skills, it also develops skills of analysis that are foundational for the future study of literature in any language.

A grade of C- or better in this course satisfies the WCAS language requirement.

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The course will examine how Latin literature in late antiquity and in the medieval West did not simply continue classical traditions but self-consciously reinvented them.  We will begin with writers who were in direct continuity with classical Latin tradition and gave it Christian inflection (e.g., Prudentius and Faltonia Betitia Proba).  Then we will turn to Carolingian writers who in the ninth century reconceived Latin as a literary and liturgical language distinct from the emerging vernaculars.  We will see how twelfth-century poets experimented with new forms but were deeply conscious of what they viewed nostalgically as the lost culture of Latin antiquity.  Finally we will see how Humanist writers self-consciously reasserted what they viewed as classical alternatives to Scholastic and other recent trends.

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