The response is due Wednesday, May 1@ 11:59pm in the D2L Assignments folder; general instructions for writing the response can be found here.
1. Drawing on both this semester's course materials and your own personal experience, discuss a particular kind of slavery – figurative/psychological, not legal – that you think you should avoid in your search for a happy life.
2. Drawing on both this semester's course materials and your own personal experience, discuss a particular kind of freedom – figurative/psychological, not legal – that you think you should seek in your quest for a happy life.
3. Explain what potential usefulness Seneca's Stoic philosophy offers (or fails to offer) you as you seek to live a happy life.
4. Explain what potential usefulness Lucretius' Epicurean philosophy offers (or fails to offer) you as you seek to live a happy life.
5. Plautus’ Pseudolus provides a brilliant example of a clever comic slave who, despite his status, takes complete control of the play and owing to his creative powers outsmarts and humiliates his social superiors. Compare and contrast Pseudolus with a character from film (or some other form of modern fiction, e.g. television, a novel, video game) who functions in similar ways as a rebellious and creative resister in her/his/their fictional world.
6. Using Lucius' spiritual/religious journey toward the worship of Isis in The Golden Ass as a (conceptual) basis of comparison, what prospects for psychological liberation and happiness do you think religious belief, or some other form of spirituality, holds/doesn't hold for you?