suovetaurilia: the sacrifice of a pig, sheep, and bull (to Mars); purification ritual for farmland to be cultivated, as described in meticulous detail by Cato, who preserves an ancient prayer (carmen); an illustration of the religious character of Roman farming (cf. "cultivation" < colo, "to worship").
ataraxia: "freedom from disturbance" (Greek), the god-like achievement of which was the primary goal of Lucretius and his fellow Epicureans; a state of tranquility reached by deep contemplation of nature/physics, as well as by detachment from the chaotic and vexing distractions of traditional public life.
Alexandrianism: attitude toward poetry associated with the Greek scholar-poets of Alexandria (esp. Callimachus) that enormously influenced Latin poets; Alexandrian poetics emphasized shorter, innovative works over traditional heroic epic, and genres and occasional pieces incorporating specialized learning and literary allusiveness, with an emphasis on craft and poetry for poetry's sake; one of the main influences on Catullus, as also the didactic/scientific poetry of Lucretius generally.
Octavian: Julius Caesar’s adopted heir and one of Cicero’s politically prominent correspondents in his letters written as the Republic is collapsing; Cicero’s paternalistic cultivation of the 19yrs. old Octavian as an ally (as described in the letters) tragically fails when Octavian joins Antony in the triumvirate (with Lepidus) and Cicero as a result is proscribed & murdered in 43 BCE.
Lesbia: addressee of several of Catullus’ poems, in Roman literary tradition identified with the historical Clodia (wife of Metellus); more significantly, her fictional name reflects Catullus’ poetic debt to Sappho, the early Greek lyric poet of Lesbos, best known for her own personal "nugatory" (and highly imagistic) poems about love and sex.
Attis: in myth the consort of Cybele, but a human character (i.e. a Greek ephebe) in Catullus 63, who in an ecstatic state castrates himself in the prime of youth (out of "hatred for Venus") and comes to regret his action; the Catullan speaker in the poem's close distances himself from such passionate enslavement to a powerful goddess such as Cybele.
Cleostrata: the comic heroine of Plautus' proto-feminist (?) Casina, who punishes her lecherous husband by launcing a comic scheme in which Chalinus is substitued for the bride Casina in a faux-wedding; as a matrona, she unusually fulfils the role of the Plautine clever slave, though she delegates the acting roles in her play-within-the-play to slave characters (Chalinus, Pardalisca) in order to her preserve her citizen's dignity/status.
nugae: "foolish fluff", as translated in Catullus' programmatic opening poem; the speaker there presents a prominent feature of much Catullan poetry (e.g. less serious and "trivial" subjects such as love and verbal abuse of personal enemies), cleverly appropriating a word his poetry's detractors might use to dismiss his work as a badge of honor in his Neoteric poetics.
materialism: Epicurean idea that the world and its contents are composed of matter, specifically atoms, which are infinite and eternal and combine to form objects and living creatures (thanks to the swerve). All human activity must be explained in material/physical terms, as Lucretius does with even such challenging concepts as thought and perception in On the Nature of Things 4.
metatheater: theater that draws attention to itself as theater-in-the-process-of-being-performed by, e.g., references to the audience or the play, a play-within-the-play, direct address to audience members, etc.; a favorite practice of Plautus, especially in Casina and Pseudolus (where the titular character frequently comments on the play's progress and audience reception directly with spectators), more subtly deployed by Terence in Eunuchus, where Parmeno is exposed as a failed version of the Plautine clever slave.
Part III (Commentaries): 20 points each, 80 points total
Distribution of 20 Points:
(1): 2 points total (author)
(2): 2 points total (work)
(3): 2 points total (speaker(s))
(4): 2 points total (context)
(5): 12 points total (commentary)
1. [Catullus 7]
1. Catullus
2. Poems
3. Catullus/the poem’s speaker
4. one of the love-poems addressed to the speaker's beloved Lesbia
5. some possible points for elaboration:
a. an example of nugatory poetry, here focused on erotic kissing, loss of one's public self in love/sex, etc.;
b. the directly expressive "as many as there are stars in the still of the night" comparison stands in sharp contrast to the learned Alexandrian one about specific Libyan sands (Battus alludes to Callimachus), an example of Catullus combining more and less direct modes of expression in an innovative poetic experiment;
c. the speaker's wish to confuse "kiss-counters" emblematizes the poem’s/poet's bold stance against Roman traditional elite male values and such a figure as Cato the Elder, Censor (i.e. "counter") of public/private morals.
2. [Plautus, Casina 1005f.]
1. Plautus
2. Casina
3. Cleostrata
4. Cleostrata agrees to forgive her lecherous husband at the end of the play
5. some possible points for elaboration:
a. an example of Plautine metatheater that comments on the pacing of the comedy and in fact brings Casina to its onstage closure;
b. Cleostrata here assumes the specific role of a playwright/director, one usually reserved for the clever slave in Plautus (she, however, avoids acting directly in the embedded play/trick to preserve her status);
c.
Cleostrata's abrupt decision to forgive her husband, who seems unlikely to have "learned his lesson" (cf. the Epilogue), signals a return to the marital status quo, as probably also the household's previous power dynamics.
3. [Cato, On Agriculture (opening)]
1. Cato
2. On Agriculture
3. Cato/the speaker
4. the opening of the work that explains the author's rationale for writing it and engaging in agriculture generally
5. some possible points for elaboration:
a. the staunchly conservative and aristocratic voice of the speaker, who invokes Roman tradition and precedent in support of his didactic project;
b. the speaker's elevation of the landed aristocratic farmer-citizen-warrior to the top of society, implying the rightful dominance of Rome's rigid social hierarchy that underpins his world-view and instrumental use of slave labor;
c. the terse and no-nonsense style of writing (this opening is as discursive & rhetorcial as the treatise ever gets – cf. the socially proper use of one's energy & labor, etc.).
4. [Plautus, Pseudolus 1320ff.]
1. Plautus
2.
Pseudolus
3.
A = Simo, B = Pseudolus
4. master and slave settle their debt (i.e. Pseudolus has won their earlier bet) at the end of the play
5. some possible points for elaboration:
a. in the comic role-reversal here, the normally all-powerful paterfamilias is forced to negotiate with his slave re the money wagered (just after degradingly loading the cash onto his slave's back himself!);
b. Pseudolus highlights the stark difference between what is at stake for each player in the bet, namely physical torture for himself versus merely emotional anguish for this master ("Oh, Oh, Oh!");
c. despite Simo's violent threat of restoring the socially proper master/slave relationship of power after the play ("I'll have my revenge"), Pseudolus remains defiant ("I've got a strong back"), in effect identifying a creative, autonomous psychological self that is distinct from his physically vulnerable slave's body.
5. [Catullus 95]
1. Catullus
2. Poems
3. Catullus/the poem’s speaker
4. a programmatic poem (near the end of the collection) reaffirming Catullus' Alexandrian poetics
5. some possible points for elaboration:
a. the Alexandrian emphasis on meticulous poetic craft ("Nine summers and nine winters");
b. the contrast between voluminous and hackneyed epic (probably), as written by Hortensius and Volusius, and Zyrmna, which is focused on the less conventional and obscure incestuous myth of Myrrha and her father;
c.
the forecasted geographic and temporal reach of Zmyrna versus the merely ephemeral and local influence of the non-Alexandrian works described (appreciated by the masses, not the privileged poetic circle).
6. [Terence, Eunuch 580ff.]
1. Terence
2. Eunuch
3. A = Chaerea, B = Antipho
4. Chaerea brags of his rape of Pamphila to his fellow ephebe Antipho
5. some possible points for elaboration:
a. the ekphrasis of the painting of Jupiter and Danaë and its possible psychological relevance for both characters (Chaerea and Pamphila) in this narrative;
b. Chaerea’s bold drawing of parallels between himself and the sexually all-powerful Jupiter as self-exhortation & justification for committing rape, most striking in that he also draws attention to his "un-manly" eunuch's role (cf. his servile fanning of Pamphila);
c. the discordance/dissonance between the brutality of Chaerea’s act and his aestheticism (e.g. the ekphrasis, his quotation of a line from Roman tragedy, "He whose thunder . .. ") as he describes the only rape to occur within the time-frame of an ancient comedy, not several months before the play – Terence seems to be critiquing traditional Roman views of masculinity.
7. [Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2.1ff.]
1. Lucretius
2. On the Nature of Things
3. Lucretius/the epic's speaker
4. one of On the Nature of Things' programmatic book openings, in which Lucretius typically praises Epicurus and the liberation his philosophy brings
5. some possible points for elaboration:
a. the lofty/sublime vantage point of the person watching the shipwreck on land (not Schadenfreude, as the narrator notes) pyschologically embodies that of the Epicurean who has separated himself from the noise, danger, and anxiety of traditional elite public life;
b. the speaker's extended explication of the simple life of Epicureanism, i.e. living life in accordance with nature’s simple requirements, ultimately leading to ataraxia;
c. the poet's rejection of adventurous seafaring (cf. Odyssey; note also the Phaeacian intertext, "golden statues of youths . . .") and war (cf. Iliad) as a means of elevating his didactic and philosophical epic to a unique – and supreme in the poet's view – position in the Greco-Roman tradition.
8. [Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 1276ff.]
1. Lucretius
2. On the Nature of Things
3. Lucretius/the epic's speaker
4. the poem's ending (description of Athenian plague)
5. some possible points for elaboration:
a. choice of an extreme crisis as an Epicurean test of people's real beliefs and a powerful, if bleak, way to end the epic with a negative example of non-Epicurean (anti-social) perspectives and behaviors;
b. the plague and its devastation are used to demonstrate the gods' complete non-intervention in human affairs and so the futilty of supplicating them with sacrifices, etc. (hence the embittered population's disregard for religious practices, as traditional burial rites in the passage);
c.
the non-Epicurean people's panic at not understanding the science of disease and behaving accordingly results in complete chaos and breakdown of community.
The exam was worth 160 Total Points. Scores were recorded in D2L as a percentage. The class median was 91, the average 87.