| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| CLASSIC 5 | LATIN/GREEK ROOTS IN ENGLISH | WATSON, T. | Studies in the formation and use of English words from Greek and Latin derivatives. Particularly useful for first-year students who wish to augment their vocabulary systematically. No prerequisites. |
| CLASSIC 10 | SCIENTIFIC TERMINOLOGY | DE GUZMAN, B. | A study of English terms derived from Greek and Latin and important to contemporary medicine, science and other professions, with emphasis on the development of word-building skills. No prior knowledge of Greek or Latin required. The work is designed to aid undergraduates, particularly those in the sciences, in the development of their technical vocabulary. No prerequisites. |
| CLASSIC 37B | ROMAN EMPIRE | ZISSOS, P. | The course is a survey of some of the highlights of Roman civilization during the early centuries of the Roman empire (end of the first century BCE to the third century CE). In this period, the Roman world was ruled by an emperor who increasingly came to have absolute power. We will look not only at political history, but also at social history, literature, art and architecture, and religion. The course will consider a number of questions, including the political and social consequences of living under an absolute ruler - especially when, as was quite often the case, he was unbalanced. This is the period of \"bread and circuses\" in which the emperors bought off the lower classes by providing the grain dole and spectacular free entertainment such as chariot races and gladiatorial contests. We will also look at how the emergence of Christianity affected the Roman world, and how complex social systems and entrenched institutions such as slavery evolved over time. The early centuries of the empire were a time of great prosperity in which Roman power reached its zenith; it was a period of relative stability but also, in some respects, a time of decadence, which has been a source of both admiration and loathing for almost all subsequent ages, including our own. |
| CLASSIC 45B | THE HEROES | ZISSOS, P. | Classics 45B is the second part of the Classical Mythology series. This course will focus on the most important Greek and Roman heroic myths and legends, as well as the influence they have had on later thought, art, music and literature. Some of the topics to be discussed in this class will be: myth and psychology, the ideology of mythic narrative, and the survival of classical myth in later western culture. We will use a standard textbook, but the focus will be on reading heroic epic, including the story of Jason and the Argonauts, Homer\'s Odyssey, and Virgil\'s Aeneid. The course will make regular use of visual materials and computer resources. Prerequisites: this is the second course in the series Classics 45 A-B-C. The courses are best taken in sequence, therefore, students enrolling in 45B should have already taken 45A. The Classics 45 A-B-C series satisfies the Humanistic Inquiry Breadth requirement. |
| CLASSIC 75 | CLASSICAL RHETORIC | GOLDMAN, M. | Introduction to the principles of rhetoric among the Greeks and Romans and to the critical analysis of arguments. Students are introduced to the history, law, and politics that provided the context in which ancient rhetoric operated. One of the most highly valued skill in antiquity was the ability to speak persuasively. The reasons are not hard to find: in Athens, defendants had to speak for themselves and political decisions were taken only after speeches before the citizens. In Rome, a political career depended one\'s speaking ability. It is not hard to see why training children to speak quickly became a main job of teachers. In this course, we will examine the culture of rhetoric that flourished in Ancient Greece and Rome. In lecture and discussion, we will examine the history, theory, and practice of classical rhetoric. We will read from foundational texts such as Aristotle\'s rhetoric, Plato\'s Gorgias and Phaedrus, Cicero\'s On the Orator, Quintilian\'s On the Education of the Orator. The textbooks will be George Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric and Matsen et al., Readings from Classical Rhetoric. Although the main focus is historical, I hope to apply the ancient conceptual tools to modern forensic (legal) and political oratory. In addition, we will look at the place of classical rhetoric in modern literary discourse. |
| CLASSIC 160 | COMEDY IN TRANSLATION | SUTTON, D. | Reading (in English translation) and discussion of some of the ancient plays that form the basis of our Western comic tradition, by Aristophanes, Medander, Plautus, and Terance; discussion of the theory of comedy. Grades based on classroom performance, midterm, and final examinations. |
| CLASSIC 170 | ANCIENT DINING | GOLDMAN, M. | A close, critical look at ancient eating and drinking practices, specifically the Greek symposium and Roman cena. According to the cliché, you are what you eat. You are also how you eat. In antiquity as today, the practices that surround eating and drinking are areas of cultural and social contention and definition. In this course, we will examine the eating practices of the ancients from a historical and cultural perspective. We will look at both the material remains and literary sources. All work will be read in translation. There will be an oral report and a final paper (circa 10 pages). |
| CLASSIC 220 | ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY | LAPE, S. | This course will examine the moral basis of democratic citizenship from the late fifth century to the Lycurgan period. We will consider democratic moral values, that is the specific moral capacities democratic citizens were supposed to have, questions of moral agency and responsibility. To the degree that it is possible, we will examine these issues in their historical context. |
| CLASSIC 220 | TRANSMISSION OF CLASSICAL CULTURE | SALZMAN, M. | Letter writing was a necessity and an art form in the Roman world; letters served not only as the principal mode of communication, but as one of the key ways to build friendship ties between members of Rome’s elite. In such a world, self-representation in letters was central to one’s public identity, especially if one were an upwardly mobile new man like Cicero. Cicero’s representation of himself as the ideal Roman – in public and private – was transmitted to later generations in no small part through his letters; these were studied and emulated by pagan and Christian letter writers for centuries to come. This course will focus on three central concepts in the letters of Cicero that articulate his vision of the ideal Roman, namely friendship, honor, and duty. We will see how these notions were transmitted and reinterpreted in the letters of three fourth century writers, the pagan Symmachus and the Christians Jerome and Augustine. These three letter writers represent different approaches to the transmission of classical culture but each was highly influential on medieval and renaissance conceptualizations of these classical ideals. |