8. "Ubi Nemo Ultra Erat": Latin Culture Beyond the Margins
John Higgins, The Gilbert School
Since Ireland was never a province of the Empire, its major literary monuments serve as examples of Latin writing beyond the geographical margins of the Roman world, and it is a major concern of the writers to portray themselves as such. We will read the Confession of Saint Patrick, in which he emphasizes the fact that he has travelled to places where no other Christian has been, Muirchu's Life of Patrick, Adomnan's Life of Columba, an exile beyond Ireland itself in Iona, and finish with the Voyage of Saint Brendan, an account of a sea voyage in the North Atlantic that may reflect early Irish voyages to America.
9. Greeks and Freaks: Cyclops, Scythians, and Alexander's Oddities
Donald Lateiner, Ohio Wesleyan University
Hellenes in their travels (colonial, commercial, conquest, etc.) encountered many kinds of non-Greek “others” and “otherness.” Distance tends to multiply difference, whether in fantasy or fact, technologies or creative fictions, marvel lists or artifacts. We’ll read selected passages from “Homer’s” fantasies, Herodotus’ ethnographies, and Plutarch's biography of Alexander. Our aim is to analyze Greek proto-anthropological tools for the experiencing of the exotic and correspondingly for self-definition and identity. Finally, we ponder ancient and modern motives for wonder, gifts and other object-traffic (plunder, purchase), exploration and exploitation, manipulation, and even appreciation.
10. Ovid on the Elsewhere and Elsewhen
Judith P. Hallett, University of Maryland
We will look at several Ovidian poems and narratives--in English translation with an eye on the Latin--that highlight, either directly or obliquely, similarities and differences between Ovid's contemporary Augustan Roman milieu and societies that he locates outside these geographical and temporal boundaries. Readings will be taken from the Amores (among them 3.9, on the death of Tibullus), the Metamorphoses (among them the stories of Pyramus and Thisbe, and of Baucis and Philemon), and in particular the Tristia, which Ovid wrote after his exile to the Black Sea in 8 CE.
11. Get Back Your Greek
Katherine Kretler, Dartmouth College
This is the ideal course for participants who have had studied Greek in the past but need to review some basics before reading literary texts. We will work with short passages from literature (Herodotus, Homer, and/or New Testament), but will also devote a generous share of each class session to the review of noun and verb forms.
12. Cosmopolitan Cuisines
Martha Risser, Trinity College
Drawing on evidence from vases, wall-paintings, mosaics, terracotta plaques,
funerary art, archaeology, and literature, we will explore the significance of dining in cultural identities. Discussion topics will include cultural stereotypes related to food and drink; the extent to which banquets of the Greek and Roman elite were imitated - and influenced - by foreigners; how their diets and table manners identify individuals as either civilized or savage; and what the archaeological record reveals about dietary practices in and at the peripheries of an increasingly multi-ethnic Classical world.
13. "O Attic Shape! Fair Attitude!": Keats and Romantic Hellenism
Bruce Graver, Providence College
No Romantic poet was more fascinated with Greek and Roman antiquity than John Keats, yet few had less formal training in the Classics. This course will examine the ways in which an untrained amateur like Keats came to know classical antiquity in early 19th century London. Our discussions will include the controversy over the Parthenon (or Elgin) Marbles, the competition between the British and French over the excavation of antiquities, the growth of public museums, like the British Museum and the Louvre, as well as a generous helping of Keats's verse.
