Selections from melic, iambic, elegiac, and choral poetry. Due to the fragmentary state of some of the Greek material, equivalent meters used in Latin poetry are occasionally referred to. A major goal of these courses remains to increase proficiency and improve comprehension of the Latin language. Hence, they involve intensive reading of Latin texts, with the usual attention to matters of grammar, idiom, translation, etc. Therefore these courses also involve substantial reading of secondary materials, and significant class time is devoted to the discussion of the literary, historical, and social issues that the texts raise.
Specific offerings vary year by year.
An intensive and specialized approach to Greek and Roman history. This course examines the historical, political, and cultural development of the ancient Greek world from Minoan civilization to Hellenistic times. This course examines important social, political, and cultural developments in the ancient Roman world, primarily through a study of literary texts, from Rome's beginnings as a small city-state to the high empire. A study of the tragedies of the great playwrights of ancient Athens, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and their treatment by the comic poet Aristophanes, in the context of Aristotle's Poetics. An examination of the genre of epic and its transformation, from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, through Apollonius's Argonautica and Virgil's Aeneid, to Lucan's Pharsalia and Statius's Thebaid, with reference to Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, Milton, and Joyce.