CLAS 210 - Greek and Roman Classics in English
In the first half of this quarter we studied Greeks.
Our readings started with
the Trojan War epic: Homer's Illiad
and travelled the gamut of lyric poetry by various authors,
tragedies Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Euripides' Hippolytus,
Plato's Symposium,
histories by Herodotus and Thucydides,
an old comedy Aristohpanes' The Clouds,
and one of many literary "myth of the fall" stories Jason and the Golden Fleece by Apollonius of Rhodes.
Generally we find that Greeks are concerned with kleos (honor or reputation) and justice of the talio (appropriate punishment e.g. an eye for an eye).
In the second half we're studying the Romans.
We started light heartedly with
Plautus' comedy The Pot of Gold,
continued through a long history by Livy,
learned about atomic theory in the philosophic On the Nature of Things by Lucretius,
read a handful of polymetric poems by Catullus,
and this week finished a speech by Cicero concerning civil war.
Through the end of the quarter we'll be reading
Vergil's Aeneid,
Ovid's Metamorphoses,
another history by Tacitus,
and Seneca's Phaedra.
Romans show more concern for society and family than the Greeks.
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