A thorough presentation of the elements of Latin grammar. Emphasis is placed on achieving a reading proficiency.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

A continuation of Latin 1101. During this term, readings are based on unaltered passages of classical Latin.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

A review of the essentials of Latin grammar and syntax and an introduction to the reading of Latin prose and poetry. Materials to be read change from year to year, but always include a major prose work. Equivalent of Latin 1102, or two to three years of high school Latin is required.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An introduction to different genres and themes in Latin literature. The subject matter and authors covered may change from year to year (e.g., selections from Virgil’s “Aeneid” and Livy’s “History,” or from Lucretius, Ovid, and Cicero), but attention is always given to the historical and literary context of the authors read. While the primary focus is on reading Latin texts, some readings from Latin literature in translation are also assigned. Equivalent of Latin 2203 or three to four years of high school Latin is required.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

All that remains of the Roman novel comes from two texts: Petronius’s Satyrica and the Metamorphoses by Apuleius. Petronius’s fragmentary, funny, and often bizarre Satyrica (probably late first century CE) follows a same-sex love triangle slumming its way around ancient Italy. Apuleius’s Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass (late second century CE) tells the story of a young man who dabbles in magic and accidentally transforms himself into an ass. The ass’s quest for salvation is the frame for several sub-narratives illuminating the larger story’s themes. Focuses on selections from one or both novels in Latin and complements these with the remainder in translation. Focus is also on a precise understanding of the Latin text and an appreciation of the author’s style, but also examines what the novels reveal about the social, historical, economic, religious, linguistic, and literary contexts in which they were produced.

Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester

Near the end of the first century B.C., a general-poet named Gallus established the conventions of a new poetic form, Roman elegy, perhaps the most Roman of all poetic genres. It employs Greek meter and draws heavily from Greek models, and yet has no true analogue from the Hellenic world. The elegists—charming, playful, and downright funny—were part of a unique literary circle and offer a rare opportunity to see how poets engaged in literary rivalry and one-upmanship. Readings include works of the Augustan elegists, Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid. Discusses the origins of elegy as well as its relationship to other genres, especially epic and oratory, conceptions of gender in the Augustan age, and Latin elegy’s role in challenging Roman cultural and political expectations, as the dalliances portrayed by the elegists are strikingly at odds with the social agenda of the first Roman emperor, Augustus.Taught concurrently with Latin 3308.

Few figures altered the course of the Mediterranean World as much as Julius Caesar: warlord, historian, general, statesman, orator, and innovator, his deeds were as horrific as they were transformative, and symbolize the chaotic era of strife that devastated Rome, but also led to the genocide and provincial conquest of Gaul. By reading selections from his own works as well as works of poetry, epistolography, history, and oratory from the late Republic, as well as modern works that examine or re-imagine his legacy, students will come to grips with the grand game Caesar was playing that resulted not only in the demise of the nearly 500 year old Republic of Rome and the subjugation of millions of Gauls, but his own murder at the hands of his fellow senators. Students will also examine the validity of the use of Caesar as a politically evocative model. This is a bilevel course, with students at the 2209 and 3309 levels meeting together but with a different syllabus for each level.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester

The intimacy and immediacy of Catullan lyric and elegiac poetry have often been thought to transcend time and history; in his descriptions of a soul tormented by warring emotions, Catullus speaks to all of us who have felt love, desire, hatred, or despair. Yet Catullus is a Roman poet, indeed, the Roman poet par excellence, under whose guidance the poetic tools once wielded by the Greeks were once and for all transformed by the Roman world of the first century BC. Catullus is a product of his time; in turn, he helps to make his time comprehensible to us. Catullus is studied in all his complexity by engaging the entire literary corpus he has left, and so to understand his crucial role in shaping the Roman poetic genius. Taught concurrently with Latin 3310.

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester

T. Lucretius Carus (c. 94-55 BCE) is the author of a poem, “on the nature of things,” composed in six books of didactic-epic hexameters. A student of Epicurean philosophy, Lucretius adapts both the beliefs and protoscientific discoveries of one of classical antiquity’s most influential intellectual traditions to Latin poetry; his poem proves a model both for subsequent classical poets and for the rationalist movements of the Renaissance. In this seminar, we will read selections from the poem in Latin, and the entire work in English, and consider recent scholarly approaches to Lucretius’s work. We will also devote several weeks at the end of the semester to Lucretius’s postclassical influence and reception. This is a bilevel course, with students at the 2215 and 3315 levels meeting together but with a different syllabus for each level.

Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester

Roman comedies are the earliest works from Roman antiquity that have survived in something close to their original forms. Students read one to two plays in Latin and supplement this reading with discussion of scholarship around these plays. There may be additional readings of primary sources in translation. This course examines issues beyond the history, humor, and language of comic plays, and also investigates the serious issues—such as identity, communication, hierarchy, power and oppression—that inhere in any discussion of comedy. Focuses on readings from either or both Plautus or Terence, the two authors of Roman comedy whose work has survived.

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester

Marcus Tullius Cicero (103-43 BC) lived through a period of great social, political, and cultural upheaval and through his prolific writings left us a detailed, if subjective, record of what he did, saw, and experienced. He did so, furthermore, with style—that is, he wrote in a Latin style of such remarkable purity and elegance that he has set the standard not only for scholars through the centuries who have studied Latin style but also for many writers of prose of all sorts—rhetorical, philosophical, historical—throughout the course of Western intellectual history. Our focus this semester, therefore, will be twofold—to read selections from Cicero’s works that can give us some sense of the world in which he lived and the Roman identity he helped to shape, and to acquire an appreciation for Latin prose (and perhaps give us some new techniques for reading it) as Cicero created it. Taught concurrently with Latin 3304.

Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid, 43 B.C.E.–17 C.E.) is a sophisticated and rewarding writer of Latin poetry, whose work was greatly influential on the writers and artists of succeeding eras. His epic-style Metamorphoses, in fifteen books, gathers together several hundred episodes of classical myth, organized through an elaborate play with chronology, geography, history, philosophy, and politics; the resulting narrative is at once clever, romantic, bleak, and witty, and repeatedly draws attention to its own self-conscious poetics while carrying the reader along relentlessly. Focuses on a close reading of three books in Latin, against the background of the entire poem read in English, and considers at length the ideological contexts for and implications of Ovid’s work. Assignments include several projects intended to train students to conduct research in Classics; this seminar counts as a research seminar.

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester

From archaic Rome to the latest tweet of Pope Francis, the Latin language boasts a history of nearly 3,000 years, and unites communities of speakers and readers from every part of the world. These communities look to the ancient period for inspiration, revering authors like Vergil and Cicero—but they also persevere in the creation of new works. In fact, the output of these “postclassical Latinists” represents nearly all of the texts written in Latin. The works that survive from the classical period comprise less than 1 percent of all extant Latin literature and documents. In this course, we will explore the possibilities that lie within this enormous corpus of understudied Latin texts. We will focus on three main areas: a) Late Antique Latin (roughly 200—600), Medieval Latin (roughly 600—1300), and Renaissance and early modern Latin (roughly 1300—1750). The latter will focus particularly on the Americas, especially Latin America.

Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester

Marcus Tullius Cicero (103-43 BC) lived through a period of great social, political, and cultural upheaval, and through his prolific writings left us a detailed if subjective record of what he did, saw, and experienced. He did so, furthermore, with style—that is, he wrote in a Latin style of such remarkable purity and elegance that he has set the standard not only for scholars through the centuries who have studied Latin style but also for many writers of prose of all sorts—rhetorical, philosophical, historical—throughout the course of Western intellectual history. Our focus this semester, therefore, will be twofold—to read selections from Cicero’s works that can give us some sense of the world in which he lived and the Roman identity he helped to shape, and to acquire an appreciation for Latin prose (and perhaps give us some new techniques for reading it) as Cicero created it.

Born in 70 BCE, the poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) lived through the traumatic decades that saw the end of the Roman republic and witnessed firsthand the political rebirth of Rome managed by Octavian after the battle of Actium. Virgil’s “Aeneid,” written in the first decade of the restored Republic, reflects both the historical turmoil of the time and its outcome; at the same time, it stands as the greatest artistic achievement of the period (and, arguably, of all Latin literature). Three books of the “Aeneid” read in Latin, and the remainder of the poem read in English, with special attention given to political and cultural approaches to the epic and its reception. Research seminar.

All that remains of the Roman novel comes from two texts. Petronius’s fragmentary, funny, and often bizarre “Satyrica” (probably late first century CE) follows a same-sex love triangle slumming its way around ancient Italy. Apuleius’s “Metamorphoses” or “The Golden Ass” (late second century CE) tells the story of a young man who dabbles in magic and accidentally transforms himself into an ass. The ass quest for salvation is the frame for several sub-narratives illuminating the larger story’s themes. Focuses on selections from one or both novels in Latin and complements these with the remainder in translation. Focus is also on a precise understanding of the Latin text and an appreciation of the author’s style, but also examines what the novels reveal about the social, historical, economic, religious, linguistic, and literary contexts in which they were produced. Research seminar.

Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester

Near the end of the first century BC, a general-poet named Gallus established the conventions of a new poetic form, Roman Elegy. This genre, in which the devoted lover laments his treatment at the hand of his fickle domina, is perhaps the most Roman of all poetic genres. It employs Greek meter and draws heavily from Greek models, and yet has no true analogue from the Hellenic world. The elegists charming, playful, and downright funny were part of a unique literary circle, and offer a rare opportunity to see how poets engaged in literary rivalry and one-upmanship. Works of the Augustan elegists Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid are read, and the origins of elegy are discussed as well as its relationship to other genres, especially epic and oratory. Reading this comical and self-aware branch of poetry reveals insightful perspectives on conceptions of gender in the Augustan age. Also questions Latin elegy’s role in challenging Roman cultural and political expectations, as the dalliances portrayed by the elegists are strikingly at odds with the social agenda of the first Roman emperor, Augustus. Research seminar.

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Few figures altered the course of the Mediterranean World as much as Julius Caesar: warlord, historian, general, statesman, orator, and innovator, his deeds were as horrific as they were transformative, and symbolize the chaotic era of strife that devastated Rome, but also led to the genocide and provincial conquest of Gaul. By reading selections from his own works as well as works of poetry, epistolography, history, and oratory from the late Republic, as well as modern works that examine or re-imagine his legacy, students will come to grips with the grand game Caesar was playing that resulted not only in the demise of the nearly 500 year old Republic of Rome and the subjugation of millions of Gauls, but his own murder at the hands of his fellow senators. Students will also examine the validity of the use of Caesar as a politically evocative model. This is a bilevel course, with students at the 2209 and 3309 levels meeting together but with a different syllabus for each level.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester

The intimacy and immediacy of Catullan lyric and elegiac poetry have often been thought to transcend time and history; in his descriptions of a soul tormented by warring emotions, Catullus appears to speak to and for all who have felt love, desire, hatred, or despair. But Catullus is a Roman poet -- indeed, the Roman poet par excellence, under whose guidance the poetic tools once wielded by the Greeks were once and for all appropriated in and adapted to the literary and social ferment of first century BCE Rome. Close reading of the entire Catullan corpus in Latin complemented by discussion and analysis of contemporary studies of Catullus work, focusing on constructions of gender and sexuality in Roman poetry, the political contexts for Catullus’s work, and Catullus in Roman intellectual and cultural history.

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester

The Roman poet Horace famously commented that captured Greece took captive its fierce captor -- in other words, that though Rome conquered Greece, the culture of Greece captivated uncivilized Rome; his reference to Greece includes first and foremost Sicily, which was the richest center of Greek culture in the Mediterranean and became Rome’s first extra-peninsular colony in 242 BC. Regards the history of Sicily both before its transformation into a Roman province and during the first three centuries of Roman rule through a number of central primary texts: readings in Latin from the historian Livy, the politician Cicero, and the poets Ovid and Horace are supplemented by readings in English from relevant Greek sources, including the poet Pindar and the historian Thucydides, in the context of the archaeological record. Students have the option of participating in a study tour of Sicily during the spring break. Research seminar.

T. Lucretius Carus (c. 94-55 BCE) is the author of a poem “on the nature of things,” composed in six books of didactic-epic hexameters. A student of Epicurean philosophy, Lucretius adapts both the beliefs and protoscientific discoveries of one of classical antiquity’s most influential intellectual traditions to Latin poetry; his poem proves a model both for subsequent classical poets and for the rationalist movements of the Renaissance. In this seminar, we will read selections from the poem in Latin, and the entire work in English, and consider recent scholarly approaches to Lucretius’s work. We will also devote several weeks at the end of the semester to Lucretius’s postclassical influence and reception. This is a bilevel course, with students at the 2215 and 3315 levels meeting together but with a different syllabus for each level.

Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester

An introduction to the earliest complete texts that survive from Latin antiquity, the plays of Plautus and Terence. One or two plays are read in Latin and supplemented by the reading of other plays in English, including ancient Greek models and English comedies inspired by the Latin originals. Explores not only the history, structure, and language of comic plays, but also issues such as the connection between humor and violence, the social context for the plays, and the serious issues— such as human identity, forms of communication, and social hierarchies—that appear amidst the comic world on stage.

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester

Ovid’s “Fasti,” an elegiac poem on the Roman calendar in six books, is the focus of much recent scholarship on Roman literature and culture. Rather than being read, as formerly, as an escapist and antiquarian foray into the byways of Roman religion and folklore, it is now read as a political poem—perhaps the most explicitly political of Ovid’s career. Considers contemporary readings of the poem in an attempt to make sense of what it means to call Ovid an Augustan poet. In addition to reading three books of the “Fasti” in Latin, students read and discuss the whole work in translation. Research seminar.

During Nero’s time as princeps (54-68 CE), despite the unstable and often cruel nature of the ruler himself, Rome experienced a period of literary, artistic, and cultural development unseen since Augustus. Works in Stoic philosophy, Roman tragedy, epic poetry, and a new genre, the satiric novel, thrived under Nero’s rule. By reading selections of the works of Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius, and analyzing historical works about Nero, we can see how thinkers and artists function in a world dictated by an eccentric and misguided—but artistically inclined—autocrat. Examines the relationships of the works to the principate and to Roman culture, how the authors were affected by the powers that be, and what their works say about the ever-evolving society of Rome. Research seminar.

Persephone and her mother, Demeter, represent enduring figures in the mythological imaginary of the ancient Mediterranean. The story of Persephone’s abduction and ultimate reunification with her mother became a popular subject for Roman poets as they rivaled their Greek predecessors in creating hexameter epics. The Persephone myth was commemorated in two separate works by the Augustan poet Ovid. Centuries later, in order to assert his own claim to Latin poetic excellence, the Egypto-Greek immigré Claudius Claudianus crafted his own retelling of the myth. In this course students read both Ovid and Claudian as they study not only the myth itself, but also how diverse Roman audiences related to it in their changing cultural contexts. Students analyze the poem as a case study in literary reception, paying close attention to the ways that these poets seek to differentiate themselves, often quite self-consciously, from their predecessors.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester

Focuses on the varied poetic works of Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 BCE). Students read selections from a number of his extant works, including “Epodes,” “Satires,” “Odes” and “Epistles”; special attention is paid to the reflection of contemporary life and politics in Horace's work, and to Horace's literary relationship to other poets.