Greek Language and Literature (CLGR)

This two-semester sequence of courses introduces students to the language of the ancient Greeks for the first time. It emphasizes the fundamentals of ancient Greek grammar and vocabulary, and prepares students to read original Greek texts. An appreciation for ancient Greek culture is also fostered through secondary readings and class discussion.

This two-semester sequence of courses introduces students to the language of the ancient Greeks for the first time. It emphasizes the fundamentals of ancient Greek grammar and vocabulary, and prepares students to read original Greek texts. An appreciation for ancient Greek culture is also fostered through secondary readings and class discussion.

This two-credit course will provide students the opportunity to "bridge the gap" between fall and spring semesters by reading small portions of Greek prose texts, in a structured setting with regular Classics faculty. We will read passages from Plato, Xenophon, Lysias and Lucian. The class will meet for 15 live sessions over 4 weeks and will consist of translating Greek texts, reviewing grammar and syntax, and discussing stylistic features. Texts will be provided to students beforehand in PDF format. Students will be asked to prepare to translate certain segments of the text for each session; on occasion, we will spend class time translating passages at first sight as well. Assessment will consist of written translation assignments, to be turned in at the end of each week, as well as preparation and participation. Must have completed CLGR 10002/60002 or equivalent.

This second-year language course builds on the work of Beginning Greek I and II. It combines a review of grammar with careful reading of classical Greek authors such as Homer and Plato. The course improves students' translating skills, introduces methods for studying Greek literature in its historical and cultural contexts, and prepares students for more advanced work in the rich literature of the ancient Greeks. Offered every semester.

(Recommended for students who have completed CLGR 20003 or equivalent.) This fourth-semester language course continues the review of grammar and translating of texts begun in CLGR 20003. It introduces students to stylistic analysis through close readings of excerpts from a variety of Ancient Greek authors (mostly in prose). Knowledge of syntax will be reinforced by composing sentences and larger units in Greek.

This is an advanced course on Hesiod, the “other” epic bard of Archaic Greece. Through close reading and in-depth analysis of Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, we will trace the genealogy of the Greek pantheon from Chaos to the creation and organization of the Cosmos under the Olympian god Zeus and finally to the cycle of seasons in the mortal realm. Over the course of the semester we will read some of the most famous myths in the Greek tradition, including the succession stories of Kronos and Zeus, Prometheus’s theft of fire, Pandora’s jar, and the Ages of Man. Although the focus of this class will be on Hesiod’s language and questions of poetics, we will also examine the poems in light of the early poetic tradition of Greek literature and of the broader epic tradition, considering Hesiod alongside Homer and the Near Eastern background of the poems.

Homer’s Odyssey is one of the most influential works of the western tradition. This course builds on Intermediate Greek to provide a solid introduction to Homer, looking at the language, meter, poetics, narrative, and tradition of the Odyssey. At its core is a reading program in Greek which will focus primarily on the Apologoi, Odysseus’ narration of his journeys in Books 9-12. In addition we will read the entire poem in translation. Over the course of our study, we will examine how Odysseus’ encounters with the Cyclops Polyphemos, the sorceress Circe, the god Helios, and the suitors of Penelope reflect the important Greek institution of xenia, the guest-host relationship, upon which the framework of the Odyssey is established. The study of the primary text will be supplemented by a selection of secondary literature as we investigate what the epic hero’s journey reveals about core cultural concepts, including leadership, societal and familial duty, gender roles, hospitality, alterity, and mortality. Intermediate Greek (or equivalent) is a prerequisite for this course.

Herodotus has been called both the "Father of History" and the father of lies. His Histories, written in the second half of the fifth century BCE, is one of our earliest fully-surviving Greek prose texts and our most important source for the Greco-Persian Wars. But Herodotus offers so much more than political and military narrative: ethnography, geography, religious history, political theory, rhetoric, and a welter of short stories, all delivered by a master storyteller. In this advanced Greek course, we will read a selected book of the Histories in Greek, as well as the entire work in English and a selection of modern scholarship. We will consider the historical and intellectual context, questions of genre and prose style, and the tradition of historical writing begun by Herodotus and his work.

Greek tragedy raises some of the fundamental questions about human society. Why do states engage in warfare? How can the closest friends become the bitterest enemies? What role does the divine have in human lives? How responsible are humans for their actions? How do relationships between the sexes work? What is more important - the individual or the common good? In this class we will read one or more Greek tragedies which address these questions. Recommended for students with advanced Greek skills.

This advanced course in ancient Greek language features literature written in Athens during the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. As the centerpiece of the course, we will read Sophocles' masterpiece Oedipus Rex. Additional readings will be drawn from various genres original to this period, including history, oratory or philosophical essays. The history and culture of democratic Athens will provide an important context for analyzing the authors and texts that are read. (Recommended for students who have completed CLGR 20003 or equivalent.)

In this upper-level Greek language course, we will read selected passages from the Jewish War (Bellum Judaicum) written by Flavius Josephus. Before Josephus was a Roman citizen and a Greek historian, he was Yosef ben Mattityahu: a member of the priestly upper class in Jerusalem and a general during the Jewish Revolt against Roman rule (66–70 CE) that ended with the destruction of the city and the Jewish diaspora. Josephus straddled multiple worlds and sometimes contradictory roles: Jewish, Greek, Roman; elite local insider, traitor, imperial confidant; provincial subject, Roman citizen; Jewish scion, Greek scholar. These facets of his identity lend extra weight to his decision to write, among other works, a history of the momentous events in which he took part. In addition to selected Greek passages, we will read the entire Jewish War in English and will dip into Josephus’ other works at various points. We will consider the historical, social, and intellectual context in which Josephus produced his history. This includes the world of the Roman empire and its provinces in the first century CE, Judaism and the emergence of Christianity, and the status of Greek as the language of culture in the eastern Mediterranean during the “long” Hellenistic period. The course is designed to help students improve their skills in reading Greek prose while expanding the usual horizons of what is considered Greek literature and the Greco-Roman world.

This is an advanced course on Hesiod, the “other” epic bard of Ancient Greece. Through close reading and in-depth analysis of Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, we will trace the genealogy of the Greek pantheon from Chaos to the creation and organization of the Cosmos under the Olympian god Zeus and finally to the cycle of seasons in the mortal realm. Over the course of the semester we will read some of the most famous myths in the Greek tradition, including the succession stories of Kronos and Zeus and the account of Prometheus’s theft of fire, Pandora’s jar, and the Ages of Man. Although the focus of this class will be on the language and poetics of Hesiod, we will also examine the poems both as seminal works of the archaic Greek literary tradition and as interlocutors with a broader epic tradition, considering Hesiod alongside Homer and the Near Eastern background of the poems.

In this advanced language course, students will read selections from Greek poetry composed during the Archaic Age (before the ascendancy of Athenian literature). Students will explore how poets such as Archilochus, Sappho, Solon, Theognis, and Xenophanes reacted to the didactic epic tradition established by Homer and Hesiod. The course will focus both on the literary style and social agenda of the archaic poets, who expressed wide-ranging opinions about love, sacrifice, nobility, and justice. "Recommended for students with advanced Greek skills."

This course offers readings in a wide variety of Greek texts from the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods. It is designed to build upon Intermediate Greek, further improving students' knowledge of Greek vocabulary, morphology, and syntax. After completing this course students will have reached an advanced level of reading proficiency in ancient Greek. Authors to be read include, among others, Philo, Josephus, Plutarch, Pausanias, Lucian, Dio Chrysostom, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Julian, and Libanius. Books of the Septuagint and the New Testament may also be read. The aim of the course is to show students the literary culture in which Judeo-Christian literature developed and of which it came to form a part. This course may fulfill the Greek requirement for graduate students in Theology. Please consult your advisor.

The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire holds a crucial place in the history of Greek literature. Not only did Byzantine scribes forge the vital link between antiquity and modernity, but Byzantine mystics, poets, philosophers, and statesmen have left behind a vast and varied corpus of texts expressing the diverse discourses contributing to the formation of Byzantium. In this course, students will engage this corpus through a survey of texts composed in different historical and geographical contexts and encompassing a variety of genres (including historiography, hagiography, mystical literature, and poetry). In this course, students will encounter the writings of John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, Romanos Melodos, the nun Kassia, Michael Psellos, Anna Komnene, and others. Prerequisite: At least three semesters of classical or Koine Greek.

This module focuses on a dialogue of Plato, to be studied in the original Greek. Plato is the best known, and most widely studied still, of all the ancient Greek philosophers. All his writings give an insight into his teaching and thought. To find out what particular work will be taught next year, please contact the module coordinator, who will also advise on the edition to use. Classes will be devoted to reading the texts and discussing points of interest. Students will be expected to prepare a section of the text for each class, and to be able to translate and discuss it.

This module focuses on Sophocles' play Oedipus Tyrannus, to be studied in the original Greek. The module is taught in small classes, which are devoted to reading the text and discussing points of interest. Students will be expected to prepare a section of the text for each class, and to be able to translate and discuss it.

Homer's epic poems stand at the head of the tradition of European literature; their themes and poetic style have substantially influenced the works of Dante, Milton, and many other European writers. This advanced Greek course offers close readings of passages from the Iliad and Odyssey. The selection of texts will vary with every iteration of the course. In addition to reading the Greek texts, we will discuss the poems in their historical, cultural, linguistic and literary context, and reflect on aspects of Greek religion, Greek warfare and the place of men and women in Greek society.

Up until 1989, when B. P. Reardon's translation of the Greek novels was published, scholars of ancient Greek literature, who previously denied any interest in what they suspiciously defined as post-classical literature, had largely neglected the study of ancient novels. In recent decades, this trend has been inverted. Many studies have now been published which mostly focus on the five extant ancient novels: Chariton's Callirhoe, Xenophon's Ephesiaca, Longus's Daphnis and Chloe, Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Cleitophon and Heliodorus' Aethiopica. Moreover, in the last few years, a new trend has been emerging within Classics, namely to compare at greater length these ancient novels with both Jewish and Christian narratives. For example, the study of Joseph and Aseneth and the Acts of Paul and Thecla, among other texts, has pointed out the existence of strong similarities within all these texts in both their narrative form and their focus on love. This has led some to suggest that the genre of the Greek novel might be both a multicultural enterprise and a key component of the literature of the Imperial Era. This advanced Greek class follows this recent trend and invites students to read and compare selections of the following texts: Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Cleitophon, Heliodorus' Aethiopica, Joseph and Aseneth, and The Acts of Andrew. Students will be introduced to a close analysis of both the koine Greek and the main structural components of these texts. In particular, students will be taught with the help of narratology, intertextuality with the Odyssey and Plato's Phaedrus, characterization and gender studies. Special attention will be given to the identification of shared themes between the texts, and to the intriguing relationship between faithful love as it is portrayed in the Greek novel, and Jewish and Christian love to God. Finally, students will reflect on how all these narratives respond to the challenges of their contemporary historical context, which was characterized both by the Romans' control over the Greeks, the rise of Christianity, and the emergence of a new attention to the human person and to women in particular.

This seminar will focus on reading in Greek Plato's Symposium, one of the gems of world literature. The seminar is appropriate only for students whose Greek skills are already advanced. We will also work through some Greek prose composition to enrich our understanding of Plato's prose technique. Throughout, our goal will be to understand Plato's Greek with the accuracy and precision necessary to appreciate his literary accomplishment.

This advanced course introduces students to the most famous biographical literature from antiquity, Plutarch's Parallel Lives. Illuminating the virtues and vices of famous and infamous men from Greek and Roman history, the Parallel Lives offers an important guide to understanding the ethical imperatives of the Greco-Roman world. Plutarch's literary style, his conception of biography, and the Roman imperial context in which he wrote are key themes for discussion in the course. "Recommended for students with advanced Greek skills.

The figure of Socrates, about whom we know nothing directly from himself, truly captured the imagination of his contemporaries and subsequent generations, and not only in philosophical writings. In many ways, he appears to have created his own 'myth' that required interpretation. In this course, we will be reading in the original Greek and discussing some key texts both from the philosophical and the literary traditions. Plato's staging of Socrates, for instance in his Symposium and Phaedrus, is the most well-known, but it was not the only account in Antiquity, and so we will also be reading excerpts from Xenophon's Memorabilia. Nor was Plato the only philosopher to have claimed Socrates for his views; we will read some of the lectures of a later Stoic, Epictetus, for whom Socrates continued to be a central role model. Finally, we will turn our attention to the ways in which the 'strangeness' of Socrates could also capture the literary imagination, as in Aristophanes' comedy the Clouds. In all these accounts and through all these perspectives, the enigma of Socrates remains.

This course is an introduction to Greek paleography and provides an overview of uncial and minuscule scripts used in papyri, manuscript books, and the early imprints. Students will develop the skills necessary to read, transcribe, and contextualize Greek manuscripts. Areas include: letter forms, abbreviations, ligatures, dating, localization, formal vs. informal hands, scriptoria, and individual scribes. Emphasis is placed on manuscripts and scripts from Late Antiquity through the Byzantine period and Italian Renaissance. Students will work with Notre Dame's small but illustrative collection of papyri, Byzantine manuscripts, and Greek imprints. Intermediate knowledge of Greek is required.

This survey of archaic and classical Greek literature traces the development of the major genres and literary movements from Homer to Plato. We shall read in Greek selections from the major texts of epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy, historiography, oratory, and philosophy. Additional readings will include other Greek literary works and a sampling of the most important scholarly studies. This course will also introduce students to scholarly interpretation and scholarly methods in the literary and cultural criticism of Greek literature.

This survey of Greek literature in the Hellenistic and Roman periods traces the development of the major genres and literary movements in "post-Classical" Greek. We shall read in Greek selections from the Alexandrian poets, Greek historians of Rome, authors of the Second Sophistic, and orators of the Late Roman Empire. Additional readings will include other Greek literary works and a sampling of the most important modern studies. This course will also introduce students to scholarly interpretation and methods in the literary and cultural criticism of Greek literature.

Individual or small group study under the direction of a departmental faculty member.