Roman Achilles

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Achilles is celebrated as a quintessential hero in Homeric epic, yet he was the subject of a number of Latin poems that view the hero from different perspectives, from his boyhood to his death at Troy. This course will read accounts of Achilles in Catullus, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, and Statius and consider the ways in which Roman poets used the familiar epic hero for their own purposes. By focusing upon the representation of Achilles in a range of texts, students will also gain a broader sense of Latin literary history.