Latin Survey I: The Birth and Growth of Latin Literature

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This class offers an overview of Latin literature from its origins in the 3rd century to the late Republic. During this period, as the poet Horace put it, Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit "Captured Greece captured her savage conqueror": Greek literary forms - epic, drama, historiography and rhetoric - provided the models for literature in Latin. But these adaptations were never simple copies: the values of the Romans' militarist and hierarchical society lie close to the surface. Furthermore the values of that society were hardly static but themselves developed as Rome grew from a regional power into a world empire. The chief purpose of this class is to grasp the dual identity of Roman literature: what does it owe to the Greek world? and what does it owe to its own developing social world? Additional topics include the history of the Latin morphology and syntax and the development of Latin meters, especially the hexameter. Authors to be read include Plautus, Naevius, Ennius, Terence, Cicero, Lucretius, Caesar, Sallust and Catullus.