Advanced Latin:

PREREQUISITE: CLASS-UA.0006 OR FOUR YEARS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL LATIN

The third book of Ovid's Metamorphoses includes some of the most original and striking mythological poetry of antiquity, such as the stories of Cadmus, Narcissus, Actaeon, and Dionysus. The goal of the class is to improve competence in reading and interpretation of literary Latin, with a focus on syntax, lexicon, rhetoric, diction and meter. The text will be read in Latin, at a moderate pace (30-40 lines per session), and the students are expected to prepare in advance each new segment of the text and come to class with questions and comments. The instructor will also discuss aspects of mythology, visual representations, imagination and historical context.

Extensive readings in Virgil?s Aeneid and the other epics of Rome, including Lucan?s Bellum Civile and Lucretius?s De Rerum Natura. Consideration will be given to the growth and development of Roman epic, its Greek antecedents, and its relationship to the Romans? construction of their past. Study of the development of the Latin hexameter is also included.