Cathy Keane

The myths of ancient Greece are not only inherently interesting, but they are an incomparable starting point for the study of the ancient world, and they have offered numerous images and paradigms to poets, artists, and theorists. This course provides an introduction to the major Greek myths, their role in literature and art, their historical and social background, and ancient and modern approaches to their interpretation. Student work will include discussing course material in sections and online, taking two exams covering both the myths themselves and the ancient authors who represent our richest sources, and writing several essays interpreting or comparing ancient literary treatments. Open to first-year students.

An introduction to the society and culture of the ancient Roman Republic and Empire. The "Roman World" began as a small settlement by the Tiber River and became a huge and diverse empire extending into three continents, with a cultural legacy that has lasted to this day. The course will cover key events over a millennium of Roman political history, but much of our time will be given to study and analysis of Roman concepts of national identity, moral and political thought, social hierarchies and dynamics, family, religion, and entertainment. To this end, we will examine a diverse combination of primary sources - literary, documentary, and material.

This course focuses on the genre of hexameter satire represented by the Roman poets Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal (2nd century BCE - 2nd century CE). The Roman professor Quintilian called satire "entirely Roman" (tota nostra), and our readings will allow us to explore the meaning of this claim for satire's authors and readers. We will read a large sampling of satiric verse in the original Latin, practice reading the dactylic hexameter, and observe and discuss differences between the poets' styles and themes. We'll also read and discuss scholarship on the genre's formal characteristics and influences, its origins in Republican literary culture, and its development in the Imperial period.

The unlikely emperor Claudius, who ruled from 41-54 CE, is famous for his physical disabilities, his scholarly pursuits, his surprising elevation to power in middle age upon the murder of Caligula, his tragic promotion of his successor the teenaged Nero, his postmortem deification by the senate, and his modern reception in fiction and television. In this course we read two Latin texts that sum up Claudius’ life, character, and reign: the Life of Claudius from Suetonius’ 2nd-century CE collection of imperial biographies, and the vicious satire written just after Claudius’ death, attributed to Seneca and called Apocolocyntosis (“Ascent of the Pumpkinhead into Heaven”). We also sample the historical writing of Tacitus and the satire of Juvenal. For all their distortions, all these texts are invaluable accounts of the Julio-Claudian era and the evolution of the institution of the principate. While we sharpen our translation skills, we also seek to understand the sources in context by discussing additional ancient accounts and studies by modern scholars and engaging in analyses of our own.