Primary readings are drawn from the Tiberian books of the Annals, in which Tacitus describes the consolidation of the imperial regime after the death of Augustus. Parallel accounts and secondary readings are used to help bring out the methods of selecting and ordering data and the stylistic effects that typify a Tacitean narrative.
In this course we will read as much as possible of Vergil’s Aeneid in the original, and the rest in translation. Our focus will be on the way the poem interrogates some of its most basic claims about empire, piety, heroism, and history, but we will try to avoid falling into the binary trap of “positive” and “negative” readings of the epic’s relationship to its Roman imperial context. Requirements: Class presentation; 10 page paper; final.
LATN 20200 or equivalent
This course will concentrate on the methods and perspectives of the discipline of papyrology, including the "hands on" experience of working with photographed and scanned texts of various collections. No previous knowledge of the field is assumed; we will begin from the ground up. Approximately the first six weeks of the course will be devoted to an introduction to the study of papyri, in which our concerns will include the following: 1. transcription and analysis of different paleographic styles, including literary hands and documentary Ptolemaic scripts. 2. extensive reading of edited papyrus texts from the Pestman and Loeb editions and elsewhere; 3. careful attention to the linguistic phenomenon of koine Greek with regard to phonology, morphology, and syntax; how the koine differs from the classical language and the relationship of the idiom of the papyri to that of other koine documents, such as the New Testament; the importance of koine linguistics to textual criticism. 4. investigation of the contribution of papyrology to other areas of the study of antiquity such as literature, social history, linguistics, textual criticism, and religion.
3 years of Greek.
This seminar questions the prerogatives of disciplines in framing and explaining social change via mobility. Following earlier theories of diffusion to understand diachronic cultural change, and the subsequent contextual critiques that privilege historical contingencies and human agency, advances in identifying past human movement through techniques like ancient DNA genome testing have increasingly led to the revival of migration as a subject of focus and explanation. As growing interest in contemporary refugee and forced migration studies is showing, migration represents not just a wide-ranging practice of different types, but is a semantically charged and ambiguous term whose recent applications provide new opportunities to assess its interpretive advantages and limitations. Is the new empirical emphasis on migration re-racializing antiquity? What do we gain by studying concepts of diasporas, transnationalism, and border crossings in the premodern world? Why does migration matter? Divided into two parts, the course covers the conceptual and theoretical work in current literature on migration as well as applications to specific historical problems from ancient and modern Eurasia. (Meeting Fridays from 1:30-4:20pm in JRL TBA Enrollment Limit: 18)
A close literary and philological analysis of one of the most remarkable and perplexing of all Greek tragedies. While this has traditionally been one of the most neglected of Sophocles’ tragedies, it is a drama of extraordinary force and beauty and the issues that it explores – husband and wife, parents and child, sexual violence, myth and temporality, divinity and humanity, suffering and transcendence – are ones that are both of permanent interest and of particular relevance to our present concerns. The poetic text, in its many dimensions, will offer more than adequate material for classroom analysis and discussion, but some attention will also be directed to the reception of this play.
PQ: a reading knowledge of ancient Greek or the consent of the instructor; open to graduate students and, with the consent of the instructor, to undergraduates.
This course is a practical introduction to the styles of classical Latin prose. After a brief and systematic review of Latin syntax, we combine regular exercises in composition with readings from a variety of prose stylists. Our goal is to increase the students' awareness of the classical artists' skill and also their own command of Latin idiom and sentence structure. M. Lowrie. Spring.
Consent of the Instructor is required.
We shall read extended selections from poetry writers of recognized importance to the Latin tradition. Our sampling of texts will emphasize writers of the Late Republic and Early Principate. D. Wray. Autumn.
Substantial selections are read from Cato, Caesar, Cicero, Livy, Seneca, and Tacitus at a rapid pace, with attention paid to their use of resources of the Latin language and their role in the development of Latin style. S. Bartsch-Zimmer. Winter.
This course examines the phonological and morphological development of the Latin language from Indo-European to Vulgar Latin. That development is studied both for its own sake and as a point of departure for introducing linguistic concepts useful for the analysis of other layers of language and of aspects of literary texts. Discussion of major topics in phonology and morphology will alternate with close examination of sample or otherwise relevant texts and lexical families. Major topics are: the principles of historical and comparative linguistics; the development of the Latin sound inventory; Latin and its sister languages; the creation of the Latin nominal and verbal systems; (some of) the varieties of classical Latin; and the influence of Greek on Latin. B. Krostenko. Autumn.
We shall read extensively in Latin from the Satires of Juvenal. We shall focus on language, poetic technique, and understanding the text (also with the help of early Latin-language commentaries). M. Allen. Spring.
