CLAS 3779

This class investigates the epic genre in Rome primarily through its three most prominent works: Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Lucan's Civil War. We'll pay attention to the debt these authors owe to their Greek predecessors (above all Homer) and also survey some fragments of pre-Virgilian Roman. In addition to exploring such topics as changing standards of heroic characterization, the poetic treatment of history and myth, religion, philosophy, politics, violence, gender and sexuality, and art and propaganda, we'll try to understand how, for the Romans, writing and reading epic was so important for working out the proper relationship between individual and state, and for justifying the idea that Rome's empire over other nations and peoples was a destiny guaranteed by the gods. In addition to reading these works (or selections from them) in English translation, students will read some secondary works at the instructor’s discretion.