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Overview

Papers belonging to Schedule E feature topics in Ancient Philosophy (EB), Ancient History (EC), Classical Art and Archaeology (ED), Classical Philology and Linguistics (EE), Interdisciplinary Classics and Classical Reception (EX), and require engagement with specified Greek and/or Latin texts.

Each paper centres on one group of texts labelled List A (the ‘core’ texts of that topic to be read in the original Greek or Latin), but may also include a List B (other texts offering scope for further exploration).

Discussion of the specified Greek and/or Latin texts will be such as to allow all candidates to fully engage with their content. Therefore, in terms of the amount of texts to be read in the original, there will be no distinction between non-intensive-langauge candidates (i.e. those offering Papers A1 and/or B1) and intensive-language candidates (i.e. those offering Papers A2-3 and B2-3).

 

FOR MML/CLASSICS CANDIDATES

It is important that MML/Classics candidates only choose Schedule E papers featuring texts in a language they are studying. Some papers do in fact require engagement with both Greek and Latin texts in the original and are therefore not suitable for MML/Classics candidates. Language requirements for each paper are noted below.

 

EB papers (Ancient Philosophy)

EB1 PLATO PHAEDO

DR F.C.C SHEFFIELD
(8L, 4C: Lent)

COMBINATION REQUIREMENT: candidates offering this paper cannot offer FB1 Plato Phaedo as well (lectures will be shared).

FOR MML/CLASSICS CANDIDATES: this course requires engagement with Greek texts in the original.

Aims and objectives

  1. To introduce a central work of philosophy in ancient Greek.
  2. To introduce current techniques of philosophical analysis.
  3. To enable students to evaluate sympathetically philosophical positions and arguments with which they may not agree.
  4. To encourage the analysis of philosophical arguments with reference to the original Greek.

Scope and structure of the examination in 2023-24

Candidates will answer 2 questions in 2 hours. Question 1 will require comment on one passage from the Phaedo given in the original Greek (two passages will be offered and candidates choose one). Question 2 will require an answer in the form of an essay (four questions will be offered and candidates choose one).

Course Description

The Phaedo is a literary and philosophical classic, portraying Socrates’ final conversation, directly before his execution, as a defence of the soul’s immortality. It contains a series of celebrated but controversial arguments, as well as a myth of the afterlife, and is also a major source for Plato’s Theory of Forms.

Read the text in advance and bring a copy to the lectures.

Content note: The first two lectures discuss arguments about suicide.

List A (for ALL candidates)

Plato, Phaedo

Introductory readings

  • Bostock, D., Plato’s Phaedo (Oxford, 1986)
  • Ebrey, D. Plato’s Phaedo: Forms, Death and the Philosophical Life (Cambridge, 2023)

Recommended editions/commentaries of texts

  • Greek text, edited by C. Strachan, in vol. 1 of the Oxford Classical Text of Plato (Oxford 1995), or in the edition by C.J. Rowe (Cambridge 1993), which also has a very helpful commentary.
  • English translation in D. Sedley and A. Long, Plato, Meno and Phaedo (Cambridge 2011), or in D. Gallop, Plato, Phaedo (Oxford 1975). The latter includes an excellent philosophical commentary.

Further reading, and analytic handouts, will be provided at the lectures.

 

EB2 CICERO ON FATE AND HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY

DR L. CASTELLI
(8L, 4C: Michaelmas)

COMBINATION REQUIREMENT: candidates offering this paper cannot offer FB2 Cicero On Fate and Hellenistic philosophy as well (lectures will be shared).

FOR MML/CLASSICS CANDIDATES: this course requires engagement with Latin texts in the original.

Aims and objectives

  1. To introduce a central work of philosophy in Latin.
  2. To introduce current techniques of philosophical analysis.
  3. To enable students to evaluate sympathetically philosophical positions and arguments with which they may not agree.
  4. To encourage the analysis of philosophical arguments with reference to the original Latin.

Scope and structure of the examination in 2023-24

Candidates will answer 2 questions in 2 hours. Question 1 will require comment on one passage from the De Fato given in the original Latin (two passages will be offered and candidates choose one). Question 2 will require an answer in the form of an essay (four questions will be offered and candidates choose one).

Course Description

On Fate (De Fato) is one of Cicero’s philosophical dialogues designed to provide a comprehensive account in Latin of the state of philosophical inquiry.  It sets out Stoic and Epicurean views about the nature of moral responsibility and the explanation for voluntary action against the background of their respective physical theories, their views of necessity and possibility, and their understanding of the logic of future-tensed statements.  It offers an introduction to those long-standing philosophical questions, the Hellenistic philosophical landscape, and the sceptical Academic stance that Cicero prefers.

List A (for ALL candidates)

Cicero, De Fato

Introductory readings

Relevant context and further texts are found in A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1987), sections 20, 38, 62 .

You can familiarise yourself with the protagonists of this course by reading the relevant sections of The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (chs. 3, 5, 6, 7), The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism (chs. 5 and 8), and The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism (chs. 3–6, 7, 8, 11).

Recommended editions/commentaries of texts

Latin text, edited by W. Ax in the Teubner edition (1938).

The Loeb edition with translation by H. Rackham or the translation in the edition by R. W. Sharples (Aris and Phillips 1991), which also has a very helpful commentary.

Further reading, and analytic handouts, will be provided at the lectures.

 

EC papers (Ancient History)

EC1 CONSTRUCTING SEX AND GENDER IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME

DR G. MALTAGLIATI
DR S. MALIK
(8L, 4C: Michaelmas)

FOR MML/CLASSICS CANDIDATES: this course requires engagement with both Greek and Latin texts in the original.

Aims and objectives

  1. To introduce students to the construction of sex and gender in the Greek and Roman world.
  2. To reveal how sex and gender were represented through texts in classical Athens and in late Republican and early imperial Rome.
  3. To reveal how (differently) what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman were constructed at different times and in different circumstances.
  4. To uncover the range of roles attributed to men and women, the expectations of male and female sexuality.
  5. To investigate whether the Greek or the Roman world was a world that thought exclusively in gender binaries.

Scope and structure of the examination in 2023-24

Candidates will be asked to answer two question in two hours. One of the questions will demand commentary on one passage of untranslated Greek or Latin (from a choice of two passages).

Course Description

The eight lectures will introduce constructions of heterosexual and homosexual identities for men and women in the Greek and Roman worlds, with particular attention to the set texts. The four classes will look in detail at passages.

Content note: This course explores the historical construction of sex and gender, including pederasty and homosexual and heterosexual prostitution. Some of the material discussed is sexually explicit.

List A (for ALL candidates)

  • [Hippocrates] Peri Parthenion
  • Xenophon Oeconomicus 7.3–43
  • [Demosthenes]  59 = Apollodoros, Neaira 18–44
  • Aeschines 1 Against Timarchos 37–65
  • Catullus 63 93 lines
  • ‘Laudatio Turiae’
  • Suetonius Claudius 26–30
  • Petronius Satyrica 91–100
  • Juvenal 6. 1–345

List B (for ALL candidates)

  • Xenophon Oeconomicus 7.44–10
  • [Demosthenes]  59 = Apollodoros Neaira 1–17, 45–end.
  • Aeschines 1 Against Timarchos 1–36, 66–end.
  • Petronius Satyrica 66–91, 101–138
  • Juvenal Satires 6.355–end

Introductory readings

  • M. Foucault History of Sexuality: Vol. 2 The Use of Pleasure (Harmondsworth, 1985)
  • C. Vout Exposed: the Greek and Roman Body (London, 2022) ch. 3 ‘Sex and Society’.

Recommended editions/commentaries of texts

  • [Hippocrates] Peri Parthenion ed P. Potter, in Hippocrates. Volume IX, Loeb Classical Library 509 (Cambridge, MA 2010)
  • Xenophon Oeconomicus ed S. Pomeroy (Oxford, 1994)
  • Apollodoros Against Neaira [Demosthenes] 59 ed. C. Carey (Warminster, 1992)
  • Aeschines Against Timarchos ed. N. Fisher (Oxford 2001) [commentary on English translation]
  • Catullus ed. K. Quinn (London, 1970)
  • Laudatio Turiae, ed. J. Osgood in Turia: A Roman Woman’s Civil War, Appendix 2 (Oxford, 2014)

  • Suetonius Claudius ed. D.W. Hurley (Cambridge, 2001)
  • Petronius, Satyricon, ed. G. Schmeling (Cambridge, MA, 2020)

  • Juvenal Satire 6 ed. L. and P. Watson (Cambridge, 2014)
  • Aeschines Against Timarchos ed. N. Fisher (Oxford 2001) [commentary on English translation]; text in Aeschines: Orationes ed. M.R. Dilts (Leipzig 1997)

 

ED papers (Classical Art and Archaeology)

ED1 CONSTRUCTS OF CLASSICAL ART

DR N. SPIVEY
PROF M. SQUIRE
(8L, 4C: Michaelmas)

FOR MML/CLASSICS CANDIDATES: this course requires engagement with both Greek and Latin texts in the original.

Aims and objectives

  1. To introduce students to the extensive literary tradition relating to art and artists in the Graeco-Roman world
  2. To offer students the critical tools to assess and evaluate this tradition, with guided close reading of certain passages from Greek and Roman authors
  3. To measure such written sources against surviving visual and archaeological evidence

Scope and structure of the examination in 2023-24

The exam will be of 2 hours duration. Section A will require students to comment on two passages extracted from the dossier of prescribed texts. Section B comprises several essay questions on topics related to the prescribed texts. Students are required to answer Section A and to attempt one question in Section B.

Course Description

Art in the Classical world was made by artists; but 'Classical art' is a category created by scholars, collectors, and curators. This course explores how the production of art in Greece and Rome was perceived (aesthetically), believed (theologically), and received (intellectually). Primary focus is upon visual culture; however, some close reading of texts is also involved. Some of the authors will be well-known from the undergraduate syllabus, such as Homer and Catullus; others less so, yet nonetheless valuable for what they tell us about ancient art – such as Pliny the Elder, Pausanias and Philostratus). How far do such testimonies guide us through what survives of art-objects deemed as 'Classical' - and what are the alternative ways of understanding ancient iconography?

List A (for ALL candidates)

(In order of appearance in course) Diodorus Siculus 1.98, 4.76; Pausanias 1.15.1-4, 5.10-13; Dio Chrysostom Discourses 12.82.3; Plutarch Perikles 12-13, Alexander 4; Pliny HN 34.53-58, 35.61-74, 35.101-6, 36.20-24; Cicero De Inv. 2.1, Verr. 2.1.53-57; Herodas Mimiamb 4; Callixeinus ap. Athenaeus 5.197; Homer Iliad 18.482-608; Philostratus Imag. 2.18; Callistratus Descr. 3; Catullus 64; Vitruvius 7.5; Petronius Sat. 83, 88-9; Quintilian Inst. 2.13.8-13, 12.10.1-9. The texts as collected in the Reader will be the editions used for the exam.

Introductory readings

A key resource is JJ Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History and Terminology. Further specific reading will be given at individual lectures and classes; the following should be generally useful:

  • R. Neer, The Emergence of the Classical Style
  • R. Osborne, Archaic and Classical Greek Art
  • J.J. Pollitt, The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents
  • N. Spivey, Greek Sculpture
  • J. Tanner, The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece
  • C. Vout, Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present Day

Recommended editions/commentaries of texts

A 'reader' of select Greek and Latin passages will be compiled for the course and made available on Moodle; translations of these texts, and some supplements, will appear in lecture handouts.

 

EE papers (Classical Philology and Linguistics)

EE1 HOMER AMONG THE DIALECTS

DR R.J.E. THOMPSON
(5L, 3C: Lent: 2C Easter)

FOR MML/CLASSICS CANDIDATES: this course requires engagement with Greek texts in the original.

Aims and objectives

  1. To introduce students to the diachronic study of the Greek language and the oral epic tradition.
  2. To introduce the methods and principles of Greek dialectology.
  3. To introduce and develop an awareness of the distinctive characteristics of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects.
  4. To place the linguistic data within its historical, literary and cultural context and consequently to arrive at a better understanding and interpretation of the texts.
  5. To develop students’ understanding of the motivations for and processes of particular developments in the history of Greek.
  6. To encourage the development of a critical awareness of the use of written data for understanding and tracking changes in the spoken language, and of the limitations and advantages associated with various types of data.
  7. To develop skills in the close analysis of texts and in the identification and assessment of significant linguistic features

Scope and structure of the examination in 2023-24

The paper is divided into two sections. Section A will contain passages for discussion from the List A texts specified for the paper. Section B will contain questions dealing with a more general range of issues. Candidates will be expected to answer Section A and one question from Section B.

Course Description

The language of Homer is well-known to be an amalgam of Ionic, Aeolic, archaic and artificial forms. In this course we will look at the history of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects and ask how the Homeric language came to look the way that it does, and how and why it differs both from any spoken Greek dialect and from other literary dialects. We will see what is characteristic of Ionic and Aeolic and how the process of oral composition has exploited forms from those dialects and created its own epic-internal formations.

The classes will take selections from the schedule of texts for close reading and analysis.

List A (for ALL candidates)

  • Homer Iliad 16
  • Greek inscriptions as in S. Colvin, A Historical Greek Reader nos. 9–18 (Aeolic) and 19–24 (Ionic)

Introductory readings

  • G. S. Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary vol. 1 (books 1–4), Cambridge 1985, pp.1–44.
  • Stephen Colvin, ‘Greek Dialects in the Archaic and Classical Ages’, in Egbert Bakker, ed., A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, Wiley-Blackwell 2010, pp. 200–212.
  • Stephen Colvin, A Brief History of Ancient Greek, Wiley-Blackwell 2014, ch. 7.
  • Olga Tribulato, ‘Literary Dialects’ in Egbert Bakker, ed., A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, Wiley-Blackwell 2010, pp. 388–400.
  • Olav Hackstein, ‘The Greek Epic’ in Egbert Bakker, ed., A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, Wiley-Blackwell 2010, pp. 401–423.

Recommended editions/commentaries of texts

  • D.B. Monro and T.W. Allen (edd.), Homeri Opera (Oxford Classical Text), vol. II (Iliad 13-24), 3rd ed., Oxford 1920.
  • Mark W. Edwards, The Iliad: A Commentary vol. 5 (books 17–20), Cambridge 1991.
  • Stephen Colvin, A Historical Greek Reader: Mycenaean to the Koine, Oxford 2007 (selection as specified)

 

EE2 PETRONIUS AND POMPEII

PROF J. CLACKSON
(5L, 3C: Lent: 2C Easter)

FOR MML/CLASSICS CANDIDATES: this course requires engagement with Latin texts in the original.

Aims and objectives

  1. To introduce students to the study of social variation in the Latin language
  2. To introduce the methods and principles of the diachronic study of Latin and its evolution into Romance
  3. To introduce and develop an awareness of distinctive characteristics of sub-elite varieties of Latin
  4. To place linguistic data within its historical, literary and cultural context and consequently to arrive at a better understanding and interpretation of the texts.
  5. To develop students’ understanding of the motivations for and processes of particular developments in the history of Latin.
  6. To encourage the development of a critical awareness of the use of written data for understanding and tracking changes in the spoken language, and of the limitations and advantages associated with various types of data.
  7. To develop skills in the close analysis of texts and in the identification and assessment of significant linguistic features.

Scope and structure of the examination in 2023-24

The paper is divided into two sections. Section A will contain passages for discussion from the List A texts specified for the paper. Section B will contain questions dealing with a more general range of issues. Candidates will be expected to answer Section A and one question from Section B.

Course Description

The Cena Trimalchionis section of Petronius’ Satyrica contains extensive representations of the speech of freedmen. As is well-known, the language of the freedmen differs from Classical Latin in a number of respects, and often prefigures developments known to take place in the early history of the Romance languages. In this course we compare linguistic features of the language of the freedmen with a selection of graffiti from Pompeii, often written by those who have not had an extensive literary education. We shall use recent research in sociolinguistics to explain the differences from Classical Latin and to explore the process of language change. Topics covered will include the following: orthography and phonology, morphology and syntax, register variation, Greek influence and bilingualism and the notion of Proto-Romance.

The classes will take selections from the schedule of texts for close reading and analysis.

List A (for ALL candidates)

  • Petronii Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis Chapters 37-48.8, 56-63.10, 68.6-78.4; the rest of the Cena Trimalchionis to be read in English
  • Rex Wallace (2005) An Introduction to Wall Inscriptions from Pompeii and Herculaneum: Chapter I Dipinti 80-114; Chapter II Graffiti 1-53, 114-147

Introductory readings

  • James N. Adams, ‘Petronius and new non-literary Latin’ in József Herman & Hannah Rosén (eds) Petroniana: Gedenkschrift für Hubert Petersmann, Heidelberg 2003, 11–23
  • James N. Adams, Social Variation and the Latin language, Cambridge 2013, 1-27
  • Bret Boyce, The Language of the Freedmen in Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis, Leiden 1991
  • James Clackson, ‘The Social Dialects of Latin’ in James Clackson (ed.) A companion to the Latin Language, Oxford / Malden MA 2011, 505-526
  • József Herman, Vulgar Latin (translated by Roger Wright). University Park PA 2000, 1-26

Recommended editions/commentaries of texts

  • Martin S. Smith (1975) Petronii Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis Oxford: Clarendon Press (available online in Oxford Scholarly Editions)  
  • Rex Wallace (2005) An Introduction to Wall Inscriptions from Pompeii and Herculaneum: Introduction, Inscriptions with Notes, Historical Commentary, Vocabulary. Bolchazy Carducci Publishers (available online)

 

EX papers (Interdisciplinary Classics and Classical Reception)

There will be no EX papers in 2023-24.

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