Classics
Undergraduate - Latin

Catilinarian Conspiracy

This course provides an opportunity to study in detail one of the best-documented episodes of ancient history, the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63-62 BC, within its historical (political and social) context. The Catilinarian conspiracy was the attempted seizure of power at Rome by the disaffected aristocrat Catiline; it was suppressed by the consul Cicero, who controversially executed the ringleaders. The sources (to be read partly in Latin and partly in English translation) consist of Cicero's speeches to the senate and people during the crisis, his later defence of an alleged conspirator P. Sulla, and the historian Sallust's account of the conspiracy written twenty years afterwards. In addition to supplying historical information, these sources also represent the best and most exciting oratory and historiography of the late republic.

Tutor: Dr Berry

Cicero the Advocate

The course will provide an introduction to Roman forensic oratory through an in-depth study of a selection of Cicero’s defence speeches, to be read partly in Latin and partly in English translation. The course will set the various trials in their historical context, consider whether the defendants are likely to have been guilty, and examine how Cicero rises to the challenge of speaking in his clients’ defence. Particular attention will be paid to matters of rhetoric and style.

Tutor: Dr D Berry

Latin Epic

This text based course will focus on Latin epic poetry of the classical period. After some study of the fragmentary work of Ennius, ‘father of Roman Epic’, the Aeneid will be read with attention to recent critical approaches.

Martial and Juvenal

The course covers two central Latin poets of the late first and early second centuries AD. The epigrammatist Martial and his younger friend the satirist Juvenal are without doubt the two most influential Classical authors in their respective genres. Despite the generic difference, the two poets share brilliant wit, a number of common themes - such as patronage and clientage, gluttony, and sexual deviancy - a similarly gaudy picture of Rome, and the same persona of the oppressed and resentful client. The course will explore their intertextual links, as well the reality of their representation of Roman society and mores.

Latin Historiography

This course will study the principles and methods of Roman historiography. The focus in 2008-9 is on Tacitus Annals 1-3 and related texts; the course will cover both the literary and ideological aspects of the genre and the problems with using the genre as a source for first-century A.D. history.

Lucretius

This course will look at Lucretius' Epicurean poem De rerum natura. Selections from the text will be studied and analysed in detail and interpreted in its literary and philosophical contexts.

Early Virgil

The course will look at Vergil's early work, the Eclogues and Georgics. Selections from the texts will be studied and analysed in detail and interpreted in their literary and historical contexts.

Neronian and Flavian Epic

This course introduces students to important texts in Roman poetry of the first century AD. It involves the reading of a selection of passages from the extant epics of the Neronian and Flavian eras: Lucan's "Bellum Civile", Valerius Flaccus' "Argonautica", Silius Italicus' "Punica", and Statius' "Thebaid" and "Achilleid". It uses H. M. Currie's Silver Latin Epic (Bristol Classical Press) as a textbook.

Comoedia

The course will study two Classical Latin comedies (Plautus, Menaechmi and Amphitryo) and one example of the classically influenced comoedia elegiaca (Vitalis, Geta).

Late Latin: Autobiographical Narratives from the Fourth and Fifth Centuries AD

This course is centred on three of the best writers of Late Antiquity. It focuses on passages of first person narrative. Ammianus Marcellinus, one of the greatest Roman historians, tells with striking vividness of the astonishing dangers he experienced as an army officer during the Persian invasion of AD 359; Augustine of Hippo, a brilliant rhetorician, recalls the events which led to his baptism in Milan cathedral by Ambrose in AD 387 and which therefore changed the history of Christian thought; and Rutilius Namatianus, a distinguished pagan courtier and ex-Prefect of Rome, interweaves an elegant poem describing his sea-journey home to Gaul in the autumn of 417 with musings on Rome's eternity and her recovery from Gothic attacks. The approach will be an interdisciplinary one, aiming to compensate for the neglect of these texts by literary Latinists but also looking at the wider historical context and implications.

Medieval Latin Lyric

In this course a variety of medieval Latin lyric poetry (e.g. religious, amatory, 'personal', satirical) is studied, with particular emphasis on poems of French and German provenance in the 11th. and 12th. centuries. The course concentrates on close reading of texts, with particular attention to stylistic, formal, and interpretative aspects.

Course organiser: Dr Patricia Brignall

Medieval Epic

In this course two Latin epics from the medieval period, both of German provenance, are studied:- the 'Waltharius', with its pervasive exploitation of Virgilian and other classical poetry to recast Germanic heroic legend; the 'Ruodlieb', with its unique generic blend, its early chivalric features, and its idiosyncratic style.

Latin Language A and B

More advanced study of Latin language is sustained throughout the 3rd Year (in Latin Language A) and 4th Year (in Latin Language B), with written assignments and tutorials to hone linguistics skills and to give experience of a wide variety of styles.

Dissertation

In all Classics curricula students write a dissertation on a classical topic in their 4th year. The dissertation topic is chosen by negotiation between student and staff and studied with some supervision but less instruction than the courses described above.