Solitude in the Ancient Greek World

This course will explore how the poets and philosophers of archaic and classical Greece conceptualized “being alone,” particularly insofar as solitude occasioned both unparalleled achievements and unique dangers (both for the individual and the community.) We will read portions of Homer’s Iliad, Hesiod’s Theogony, Sophocles’ Philoctetes, and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, together with excerpts of ancient philosophy, with an aim of thinking through the relationship between individual and community, which is fraught with tension in so many time periods and cultures. We will also reconsider our understanding of the ancient Greeks as primarily “public” in their motivations and values, in light of the array of possibilities offered by solitude in many of these texts.