Course News
Fall 2023
8/22: Be sure to prepare today's assignment (see Schedule). This means that you should come to our first class having read Dinter's chapter, an English translation (Walsh's is recommended) of Satyricon 1-26.6, and most importantly, having meticulously prepared the assigned Latin text of Petronius, i.e. 26.7-27.6, which we will translate and discuss in class. Introduction. 2020 Smithsonian Magazine piece on revisionist views of Nero's rule. For a bar graph showing the use of the Latin tenses in narrative passages, see p. 406 of volume I of the Oxford Latin Syntax (available online at the UA Main Library), part of a general discussion of the semantic value of the Latin present. The OLS, in contrast to how we all probably learned Latin, takes a functionalist approach to Latin grammar (Latin is scientifically analyzed as an instrument of human communication, i.e. as linguists analyze any language). We translated Satyricon 26.7-27.6 in class. |
8/24: Today is the 1,944th anniversary of the eruption of Vesuvius (pics of recent finds at the Civita Giuliana villa). Be wary of dogs guarding a veritable underworld. A lararium (see further Bodel, J. and S.M. Olyan (eds.), Household and Family Religion in Antiquity. Malden, MA). We translated Satyricon 28-30.8 in class. |
8/29: calculi from a Roman villa in England. Images of tesserae and other game pieces in the British Museum. Herpetic whitlow. Recent discovery of Nero's theater. At Satyricon 33.2, Trimalchio's use of the present indicative permittis is explained by the OLS (I.312-13) as a "declarative sentence with an indirect directive illocutionary force" (!). This is a linguistic explanation for what a traditional Latin grammar might create the ad hoc explanation "indicative for imperative"; "illocutionary force" is what an utterance intends to communicate (e.g. an order, a promise, an assertion, a request), apart from its grammatical form. Trimalchio here is indirectly and politely directing his guests to wait for him to finish his game. Scene from Fellini's Satyricon. We translated Satyricon 31.1-33.8 in class. |
8/31: Latin proverbial expressions are collected in Otto, A. 1890. Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer. Leipzig. Schmeling's Petronius Bibliography (2011). Scene from Fellini's Satyricon. We translated Satyricon 34-36.5 in class. |
9/5: Stephen Hinds' Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge 1998) provides an excellent guide to intertextuality. An odd case of cultural reception: the Petronius Rig in the Gulf of Mexico. For more about Hermeros' "freedman's speech" and Latin/Greek code-switching and bilingualism in general see Adams, J.N. 2003. Bilingulalism and the Latin Language. Cambridge. We translated Satyricon 37-38.16 and 39.4-9 in class. |
9/7: W.C. Firebaugh's "complete and unexpurgated" translation (1922) of the Satyricon. pilleus represented on Brutus' EID MAR coin. Mikhail Bahktin (1895-1975); heteroglossia. We translated Satyricon 40-42.4 in class. |
9/14: Griffin is reporting on Trimalchio's biographical fresco (Satyricon 29). We translated Satyricon 45.1-8 in class. |
9/19: Garrett is reporting on katabasis/the underworld in the Cena.We translated Satyricon 71.1-9 in class. Gloyn's "She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage: Freedwomen at Trimalchio's Dinner Party".
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9/21: Introduction to Lucan; link to Tacitus' brief account of Lucan's death (Annales 15.70). We translated Bellum Civile 1.1-32 in class. |
9/26: Basics of dactylic hexameter (YouTube). For further commentary on Bellum Civile 1, see P. Roche, De Bello Ciuili: Book I (Oxford Scholarly Editions Online, 2009), which is accessible through the Main Library. There is also R.J. Getty's Bristol Classical Press edition (repr. 1992). We translated Bellum Civile 1.98-154 in class. |
9/28: Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare and Julia Appearing to Pompey in a Dream, 1770s. For the metapoetic epic-forest (cf. silva/ὕλη, "raw material of a literary work"), see pp. 10ff. of Hinds' Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry. There regrettably is no recent commentary on Bellum Civile 3 (for some notes, see C.E. Haskins' 1887 edition of Lucan). We translated Bellum Civile 3.8-35 and 3.399-417 in class. |
10/3: Study Guides for the Midterm Examination: LAT 421; LAT 521. Isabel is reporting on monsters & the grotesque (esp. Erichtho) in Lucan. Stunningly, there is no recent commentary on Bellum Civile 6; for book 7 see P. Roche's 2019 Cambridge (Greek & Yellow) edition. We translated Bellum Civile 6.624-53 and 7.617-31 in class. |
| 10/5: For Caesar's breakfast of champions, cf. "The smell of napalm in the morning" (Apocalypse Now, 1979). For commentary on book 8, see R. Mayer's 1981 Aris & Phillips Classical Text. We translated Bellum Civile 7.760-803 |
10/10: Matthias Stom's The Death of Cato (ca. 1630). Luke is reporting on elegy in Lucan. We translated Bellum Civile 8.582-621. |
10/17: Introduction to Seneca. W.C. Summers has a still useful account of Seneca's language and style in his 1910 commentary on select letters (pp. xliii-xcv); A. L. Motto provides basic help for some letters in the 2007 Bolchazy-Carducci repr. of Seneca's Moral Epistles. Martha Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire. We translated Epistulae Morales 7.1-5 in class. |
10/19: Apropos of the Saturnalia and American slaves' Christmas holiday "freedoms": "Frederick Douglass on how Slave Owners Used Food as a Weapon of Control" (NPR story): https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/10/514385071/frederick-douglass-on-how-slave-owners-used-food-as-a-weapon-of-control. No American entrepreneur (to date) seems to have fully monetized Seneca's rehearsal of poverty, though this "lifestyle guru"and purveyor of supplements (a graduate of St. Paul's boarding school in NH and Princeton) has blogged about Ep. 18. We translated Epistulae Morales 18.1-9 in class. |
10/24: Stephanie McCarter, "Seneca's 'Lost Cause'". Charlie is reporting on Pompey's flight (Bellum Civile 7.647ff.). We translated Epistulae Morales 47.1-8, 10 in class. |
10/26: Geneva is reporting on Trimalchio's use of astrology in Satyricon. We translated Epistulae Morales 53.1-4 in class. |
10/31: Paper #1 due (LAT 521). "Scholarly Perspectives on the Inscription at the 9/11 Memorial Museum" (NYT). Austin is reporting on Stoic emotions in Epistulae Morales. The University of Chicago Press Seneca translation project. Thursday's quiz will be a short passage of Seneca to translate at sight (with some vocabulary help). We translated Epistulae Morales 21.1-6 in class. |
11/7: Introduction to Senecan Tragedy. An (ancient) guide to preparing a Latin passage for class. We translated Thyestes 1-62 in class. |
11/9: Seneca's Iambic Trimeters. We translated Thyestes 100-21, 139-75 in class. |
11/14: Timothy is reporting on Pompey's death in Lucan. We translated Thyestes 204-69 in class. |
11/16: David is reporting on Seneca's Engagement with his Contemporary World. Boyle's commentary on Thyestes (Oxford 2017) is now accessible online. We translated Thyestes 405-45 in class. |
11/21: Creative Project is due. Seneca's Hendecasyllables. Sawyer is reporting on Seneca's representation of slaves and slavery. We translated Thyestes 491-529 in class. |
11/23: No class (Thanksgiving) |
11/28: Leah is reporting on Epistulae Morales in the ancient epistolary tradition. We translated Thyestes 623-56, 682-706, and 730-43 in class. |
11:30: Ethan is reporting on the character of Cato in Lucan. We translated Thyestes 748-88, 885-919, 970-83 in class. |
12/5: Paper #2 due (LAT 521). Study Guide for the Final Examination: LAT 421; LAT 521. Seneca entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online). Two biographies of Seneca (written by classicists): J. Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero (Knopf 2014), E. Wilson, The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (Oxford 2014). Review of J. Ker, The Deaths of Seneca (Oxford 2009), which thematizes Seneca's life and work through the lens of death. Emetic or comic – must we choose?: M. Haley, "Teknophagy and Tragicomedy: the Mythic Burlesques of Tereus and Thyestes." Ramus 47 (2019): 152-73. We translated Thyestes 999-1112 in class. |
| 12/11: Final Examination, 3:30-5:30pm |
