Latin Language and Literature (CLLA)

This Latin course initiates a two-semester sequence that introduces students to the language and culture of the ancient Romans. It emphasizes the fundamentals of Latin grammar and vocabulary, and prepares students to read original Latin texts. During the academic year, this course is taught as a hybrid course; a significant portion of the learning will be done by students working independently online. A deeper appreciation for English grammar and ancient Roman culture will be fostered through class discussion and attentive reading. This course is offered every semester.

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

This course is designed to help students to take advanced Latin courses in the spring. We will focus on original readings from Livy and Younger Pliny and learn about the mythical foundation of Rome, the war against Hannibal, the eruption of mount Vesuvius and the Roman persecutions of Christians. Class time will be devoted to translating together assigned Latin readings, commenting on matters of style, literature and history, and practicing some sight translation. 2 credits, fifteen classes of 75 minutes, two review sessions and a final exam. No book required, all material will be provided by the instructor.

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

This intermediate language course builds on the work of Beginning Latin I and II. It combines a review of grammar with careful reading of Christian Latin authors such as Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Bede. The course improves students' translating skills, introduces methods for studying Christian Latin in its historical and cultural contexts, and prepares students for more advanced work in the sophisticated Latin literature of pagans and Christians alike. Offered in the summer.

In this advanced Latin language class students will read accounts of virtuous behavior related by ancient Romans. What virtues and vices did the Romans extol or criticize? How did they fashion fables or stories to educate and entertain their audiences? In order to review and master the harder elements of Latin syntax, in addition to carefully reading Latin texts students will submit regular composition exercises. We will read selections from poets and prose writers such as Cornelius Nepos, Valerius Maximus, Phaedrus, Aulus Gellius, Macrobius, Livy, Pliny or Horace. Pre-requisite: CLLA 20003 or equivalent.

In this intermediate-level Latin course, students will study the literature and culture of the reign of Nero (AD 54-68), the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors and one of the most notorious figures in all of Roman history. Readings will focus on: 1) the philosophical writings of Seneca the Younger, Nero’s tutor and political advisor; 2) the picaresque novel Satyricon by Petronius, a member of Nero’s court. In the process, students will strengthen their skills in translation and stylistic analysis of Latin prose. This course ultimately prepares students for advanced study in Latin prose literature.

This course reviews major topics in Latin syntax, which students practice through compositions and specially designed, targeted readings, to the end of learning to group syntactic phenomena in sets, the fundament of quick and accurate reading. The course also introduces students to stylistic analysis and historical syntax and semantics through a survey of exemplary texts from various stages of Latin literary history.

This third-year course on the Aeneid, Vergil's literary masterpiece written in Rome in the last decades of the first century BC, aims to develop students' skills in: translating Latin poetry; reading aloud and analyzing Latin hexameters; analyzing Latin poetic style; interpreting classical epic poetry. Class will consist primarily of close study of assigned passages from the Latin text of the poem. Students will also read the entire poem in English translation and consider its cultural and historical context. The course prepares students for advanced study in Latin language and literature.

This third-year course builds on CLLA 20003 and CLLA 20004, and offers close reading of passages from the works of Roman historical writers such as Caesar, Sallust, Livy and Tacitus. Particular authors and themes will be emphasized according to the needs and interests of the class. Latin historiography is a sophisticated instrument for narrating past events, for showing how notions of cause and effect and change over time develop in historical thinking, and for indicating the relevance of the past to the present. The political and social conditions of Rome that informed the historical writings of Roman authors are discussed, and the compositional techniques of their works are examined. The course prepares students for advanced offerings in Latin literature.

(Recommended for students who have completed CLLA 20003 or equivalent.) This third-year course builds on CLLA 20003 (Intermediate Latin) and CLLA 20004 (Reading and Writing Latin Prose), and offers close reading of passages from the lyric poetry of such authors as Catullus and Horace. The lyric form gives precise and economical expression to a wide range of human thoughts and emotions, from the highly personal to the grandly patriotic. The range of Roman lyric, the technique of its practitioners, and the place of lyric poetry in Roman life are themes that receive special attention. This course prepares students for advanced offerings in Latin literature, especially CLLA 40023 (Roman Elegiac Poetry), CLLA 40033 (Roman Satire), CLLA 40043 (Roman Comedy), and CLLA 40053 (Roman Tragedy).

Recommended for students who have completed CLLA 20003 or equivalent. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-44 BC) was the most accomplished orator of the Roman Republic. This course offers close reading of select speeches of Cicero. The art of persuasion was an essential requirement for success in Roman public life, and no one was more persuasive than Cicero. The flexibility and complexity of Cicero's grammatical expression, the range of his styles, and the political contexts in which his speeches were delivered are all given careful treatment.

This advanced course introduces students to Lucretius' epic poem, De rerum natura, whose mission is to free the reader from fear and convention so as to see the world and one's place in it with unclouded eyes. This vision is a poetic re-understanding of Epicurean philosophy. Chief topics include the atomic nature of matter, the mortality of the soul, the vanity of religion, and the importance of achieving intellectual tranquillity. We shall examine Lucretius' contribution to Roman intellectual and literary history by reading select passages in his sources (Epicurus, Ennius, Homer, Hesiod) and in the two poets he most influenced, Virgil and Ovid. His importance for the development of scientific method and his influence on English poetry will be considered briefly. Recommended for students who have completed CLLA 20003 or equivalent.

(Recommended for students who have completed CLLA 20003 or equivalent.) This third-year course builds on CLLA 2003 (Intermediate Latin) and offers close reading of the poetry of Martial and Juvenal, two poet friends living and writing in Rome during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan (late 1st c. - early 2nd c. BCE). Martial's epigrams and Juvenal's satires are famous for their vivid and often wry portraits of city life and people, including everybody from emperors to slaves. Students will develop skills in translating and analyzing Latin epigram and satire and study the history and culture of the early Roman empire in which these literary genres flourished. This course prepares students for advanced offerings in Latin literature, especially CLLA 40033 (Roman Satire) and CLLA 40043 (Roman Comedy).

This advanced course in Latin on the writings of the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (aka Seneca the Younger, 4BCE- 65CE) will focus on Seneca’s letters, and then on his essay De Ira "On Anger". We will read selections of other dialogues of his in English, as well some recent critical commentary on Seneca’s work. Students will learn to read Seneca’s Latin and to recognize the particular characteristics of his style as a means to learning Seneca’s philosophical outlook, and thinking about it critically. We will also read a couple of his plays in English to consider what this philosopher does when he takes his philosophy to literature.

This advanced course in Latin prose literature examines the Roman epistolary tradition. Focusing on the letters of the younger Pliny, it studies them first as a self-conscious portrait for posterity of a prominent Roman senator of the early Antonine age, and second as a set of documents that reveal features of Roman social, political, economic, and cultural life. In addition to Pliny's letters, students will read selections from the letters of Cicero, Seneca, Augustine, or Jerome. Close attention will be given to the different prose styles of each author and his innovations within the genre. Latin language skills are necessary for this course.

How have ancient books been preserved, and what did it take to make them accessible in modern editions? In this course, we will discuss all aspects of the material and intellectual process that links ancient literature to modern scholarship. Books were written on papyrus and copied onto parchment or paper multiple times until the arrival of the printing press. Over time, the ancient texts themselves changed: they were rewritten and reread, or simply copied with errors. We will then look into the many facets of the process that endeavors to recover the original text: manuscript studies, philology, textual criticism and editorial techniques. We will address both traditional editions and new forms, such as various forms of online editions, as well as tools for the editor. Coursework will include many practical exercises; finally, we will work towards a "real" edition of a short Latin text. The course is suitable for students with intermediate or advanced Latin knowledge. No prior knowledge of paleography or codicology is necessary. Students will be offered an overview of the textual history of classical texts, as well as practical knowledge and practical experience in textual criticism and editing.

This course introduces students to the genre of Latin Love Elegy through close reading of the poetry of Propertius and Ovid. We will be concerned mainly with the practice of translation, analysis of poetic meter and style, and literary interpretation. However, our work will also involve examination of the socio-political conditions in Rome in the late 1st c. BC that provided an essential context for the development of the genre. Related to this, we will be paying close attention to the ways in which Roman elegy constructs gender and how it defines itself in relation to other genres, especially epic. In addition to daily translation assignments, students will recite selected poems to the class, take two semester exams and a final exam and write an essay of 5-6 pages.

In this course, we translate and discuss selected passages from the Metamorphoses, Ovid's idiosyncratic poetic history of the world. Topics for our discussions include the spiritual, moral, religious, political, and physical transformations portrayed between the creation story at the beginning and the deification of Caesar at the end of the text; the tension between Ovid's adherence to Roman traditions and his irreverent, sometimes subversive, artistic originality; the poem's narrative techniques, poetic style, and structure; the significance of intertextual allusions to Greek drama, Virgilian epic, and Ovid's own love poetry; the instability of gender; portraits of the poet within the work; and the innumerable faces of love, as presented through characters who are pious, raging with passion, inseperable, violent, infatuated, lovesick, devoted, and much more. Above all, this course aims at clarifying how Ovid's inexhaustible playfulness and delightful wit contributed to shaping a work of both epic grandeur and lyric intimacy that continues to inspire poets, composers, novelists, painters, and at least one playwright whose version recently made it all the way to Broadway. Daily preparation and active participation in class are essential components of the course; brief written assignments, one mid-term exam, one brief project, and a final exam also count towards the final grade. Recommended for students who have completed CLLA 20003 or equivalent.

"Recommended for students who have completed CLLA 20003 or equivalent." Romans thought they were wise. Sapientia (wisdom) was understood as better than Greek philosophy. Cicero and others thought of wisdom as a blend of tradition, hard practicality, and good government of the state, of the familia, of one's self. Finally, Greek philosophy had to be accommodated to Roman needs. Who were the Romans' sages and what was their wisdom literature? We shall read Cornelius Nepos' Life of Cato, Cicero's On old age, and consider other sages as well--the old men of comedy, Virgil's Anchises, and Ovid's Pythagoras. Latin language skills are necessary for this course.

Ovid's Metamorphoses enjoyed a wide circulation from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages, and the poem's influence on later Latin poets such as Claudian and Ausonius as well as vernacular authors like Chrétien de Troyes, Dante, John Gower, Petrarch, and Chaucer remains unparalleled. This course will focus on the ways the Metamorphoses was read over time spanning its literal, allegorical, historical, and moral interpretations. A survey of major Ovidian expositors and commentators such as Ps-Lactantius, Arnulf of Orléans, the "Vulgate" Commentator, John of Garland, Giovanni del Virgilio, and Pierre Bersuire will illustrate the poem's movement throughout different contexts and milieus. We will read selections of the Metamorphoses together with medieval texts to understand the exegetical workings of paratextual genres such as glosulae, tituli, allegoriae, integumenta, and prose paraphrases. This course also has a material culture component where students will work with manuscripts and early printed books which transmit Ovidian paratexts to further appreciate the utilitarian traditions of the objects in tandem with the texts used to explicate perhaps the most stylistically innovative Roman poem ever written. Recommended for students who have completed intermediate Latin.

Before Vergil wrote the <i>Aeneid</i> he was famous for his <i>Eclogues</i> ("Selections")--short pastoral poems with embedded political notes--and for his <i>Georgics</i>--a poem in four books ostensibly about agricultural practice but which tells tales from mythology, Roman politics and society, along with instructions on animal husbandry, astronomy, and the manners of Hellenistic poetics. In this course we will read these poems and, while enjoying their stunning poetry, will also be considering how and why Vergil weaves so many ethical and aesthetic themes into his contemplation of work, leisure, and the Italian landscape. The background of the Roman civil wars looms behind the poems. Some acquaintance with the <i>Aeneid</i> (in translation is fine) is recommended.

This class considers the figure of the autocrat in the literature of the late Republic and Early Empire as it develops from a rogue figure of loathing, to a necessary evil, to a wicked overlord or benevolent father. Questions to be considered include: what is tyranny? autocracy? What makes autocracy an evil or a good when and why? How do attitudes towards autocracy link to other social and political issues and crises? Texts to be considered include: the Verrines of Cicero, which attack the high-handed abuses of a provincial governor; Cicero's de lege Manilia, which contemplates an ideal commander; the "Caesarian speeches," where Cicero tries to fashion a voice to talk to Caesar, now dictator; the Satires and Odes of Horace, which contemplate the politics and ideology of life under an autocracy; the Georgics of Vergil, which use the tropes of didactic poetry to meditate on the price of establishing order; Satire 1.4 of Juvenal, a mock-epic attack on the emperor Domitian; and the Panegyricus of Pliny, a praise of the virtues of Trajan. Some selections from these works will be read in Latin and the remainder in English.

This class surveys the development of Christian Latin language and literature from their origins through Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. It introduces students to the various important linguistic, stylistic and literary influences that contributed to Christian Latin poetry and prose. Students will also be introduced to the varieties of Christian Latin texts and the bibliographical and research skills needed to pursue research into these texts. All along we will be concerned to improve our abilities to read and understand the Latin of the tradition that stretches from the first translations of scripture to the treatises of Jerome and Augustine. The survey of Medieval Latin language and literature in the spring semester follows and builds upon this course.

In this course, students will read a wide variety of Latin texts from the Middle Ages, both prose and poetry, both stylized rhetorical texts and private documents, texts in a highly technical language, or texts in specific dialects and sociolects of medieval Latin. A different geographical focus will be chosen for each semester. The general methodological approach is careful and linguistically sensitive close-reading, with various other strategies of reading and criticism applied throughout the semester. The main course goal is to provide students from various branches of medieval studies (graduate students and advanced undergraduates) with a core knowledge in medieval Latin and the philological analysis of Latin texts, which may serve them in their scholarly work in whichever area of the Western Middle Ages. This includes proficiency in the language itself, but also a basic knowledge of subjects such as intertextuality, textual criticism, manuscript studies, rhetoric, allegorical language, literary genres, metrics and prose rhythm.

The life of Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) spanned the tumultuous years of the transition from Republic to Empire. Born two years before Cicero became consul, he died the year the Roman senate renamed a month for the first emperor. An officer in the last battle fought by republican forces, he became a poet supported by, and supportive of, the Augustan regime. Over that span he refined or introduced many genres of Latin poetry: hexameter satire, invective iambic poetry, lyric poetry of many tones and shades, and verse epistles. This course follows Horace's career with a double focus on his literary creativity and the ambient social and cultural forces which that poetry reflects. Issues to be considered include: the nature of friendship; responses to autocracy; poetic independence; the place of poetry and the creative arts in the Augustan regime; and Horace's adaptation of Greek and earlier Latin models. Some attention will also be paid to the reception of Horace in other literary traditions.

This advanced course introduces students to Roman writings on rhetoric, the science and practice of persuasive speech. Roman theorists of rhetoric understood the state as a community of speech to be led by a great orator. In practice, rhetoric was the chief component of the educational curriculum and the basis for written and much spoken communication. We shall read selections from the Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero, the elder Seneca, Quintilian, and Tacitus. We shall also consider the ongoing history of classical rhetoric--its influence on theorists of language, communication, and power. Recommended for students with advanced Latin skills.

This advanced course introduces students to Latin comic drama. Comic plays were a popular attraction at Roman religious festivals, and Rome produced two outstanding comic writers of completely opposite temperament, the boisterous and broad Plautus, and the wry and elegant Terence. Both continue to influence Western dramatic forms. Readings from Plautus and Terence reveal the conventions of comic drama and its use as a distinctive instrument to reflect upon the concerns of Roman life.

This class considers the figure of the autocrat in the literature of the late Republic and Early Empire as it develops from a rogue figure of loathing, to a necessary evil, to a wicked overlord or benevolent father. Questions to be considered include: what is tyranny? autocracy? What makes autocracy an evil or a good when and why? How do attitudes towards autocracy link to other social and political issues and crises? Texts to be considered include: the Verrines of Cicero, which attack the high-handed abuses of a provincial governor; Cicero's de lege Manilia, which contemplates an ideal commander; the "Caesarian speeches," where Cicero tries to fashion a voice to talk to Caesar, now dictator; the Satires and Odes of Horace, which contemplate the politics and ideology of life under an autocracy; the Georgics of Vergil, which use the tropes of didactic poetry to meditate on the price of establishing order; Satire 1.4 of Juvenal, a mock-epic attack on the emperor Domitian; and the Panegyricus of Pliny, a praise of the virtues of Trajan. Some selections from these works will be read in Latin and the remainder in English.

A reading of Augustine’s Confessions, partly in Latin and in its entirety in English, with a special emphasis on close reading and precise grammatical and stylistic analysis. We will focus on understanding Confessions as a work of Latin literature and Christian philosophy, part of the great late ancient endeavor to develop new genres and styles to mirror the new belief system, yet connected to the classical world in multiple ways. In addition to the narrative itself, Augustine’s personal experience, Confessions allows the reader to gain insight into his major philosophical tenets and the conversations and controversies of his life. We will also discuss important scholarly questions (origin, historical setting, sources and parallels, biblical framework, structure, philosophical background, modern readings, etc.) and read selections of scholarly literature.

This course will examine the phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and stylistic development of the Latin language from Proto-Italic to early medieval Latin. Analysis of sample texts will alternate with discussion of relevant topics, which will include the principles of historical and comparative linguistics, Latin and its sister languages, the creation of the Latin inflectional system, the varieties of classical Latin, the development of Latin poetics and metrics, and the influence of Greek on Latin. Recommended for students with advanced Latin skills.

As the Roman republic was failing, to be replaced by a system of empire, the memory of the past became a source of reflection, anxiety, and debate. Romans remembered their dead, their ancient customs, language, religion, warfare, and their vanishing liberty. Much of this remembering involved a fabrication of the past. What to remember and how to remember (writing literature, erecting monuments, passing laws, performing rites) are central concerns for Romans from Cicero through the early Roman empire. Memory was theorized by philosophers and rhetoricians. We shall study the theories and practices of remembering through an examination of texts and material culture (architecture, city planning, art history). Texts and topics will include the antiquarianism of the great republican scholar Varro, Cicero's dialogic imagination, memory and intertextuality in Virgil's Aeneid, and the rearrangements of memory in the early imperial historical writers Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus, the encyclopedist Pliny the elder, and the scholarly collector of the past Aulus Gellius.

This advanced Latin course focuses on the myths of Rome’s foundation as depicted in Livy’ history, Ab Urbe Condita, and Ovid’s poem on the Roman calendar, Fasti. Students will study Livy’s and Ovid’s portraits of the major figures associated with the origins of Rome, including Aeneas, Romulus, and Lucretia, in order to explore the Romans’ cultural understanding of their legendary past. In addition, students will study the literary qualities of Livy’s and Ovid's writings and reflect on the social and political environment of the Augustan Age in which they wrote.

By the time the Romans came closely into contact with Greek culture, it had been flourishing for half a millennium. Its habits of life and its artistic productions both captivated and repelled the Romans, who saw in Greek culture both habits antithetical to their own ideals and artistic forms that could give expression to those very same ideals. Greek culture, in that way, forced Romans to think about what it meant to be Roman. This course probes the historical shape of that debate and considers texts which reflect both sides of it in all its variations. Primary texts, to be read in Latin, will include selections from archaic inscriptions (which are often “secretly Greek”), writers of early epic (whose output takes implicit positions on Hellenization), Cato (who professed suspicion to all things Greek), Terence’s Adelphi (which contrasts modern and old-fashioned child-rearing), the Rhetorica ad Herennium (which enthusiastically adapts Greek models, rejecting older Italic speech habits), Cicero’s oratory (in which anti- and philHellenic tropes can both be found), Cicero’s de Oratore (which contains both praise and blame of Greek-style rhetorical study), Catullus (whose wide poetic output includes both “Roman” and “Greek” insult poems), and Livy (who describes the moral decline caused by Hellenizing and who provides a vivid account of a Roman attempt to suppress certain Greek religious practices).

The course is an intensive survey of Latin scripts from antiquity through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Students will be able to accurately read and transcribe Latin scripts, expand systems of abbreviation, identify, date, and localize (when possible) different hands, and defend their interpretations. There will be a strong emphasis on the different varieties of Gothic script (textualis, cursiva, hybrida).Once the class reaches the twelfth century, students will work extensively with Notre Dame¹s medieval collection of codices and fragments. Note: The Medieval Academy of America's Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) offers competitive stipends for students taking either Medieval Latin or Latin Paleography for credit through the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame. Application details and eligibility information are available on the Medieval Academy web site?: http://www.medievalacademy.org/?page=CARA_Scholarships?

Recommended for students with advanced Latin skills. In this course, we will explore the multifaceted life and legacy of Augustine of Hippo, greatest of the Latin Church Fathers. As a saint, a thinker and a writer, Augustine has deeply shaped the Western world (not only the Catholic Church). We will read a widespread array of selections from Augustine's best known works (Confessions, City of God), but also from his sermons, letters and theological treatises. We will take a look at Augustine's exegesis and preaching, at the religious controversies in which he was involved, and at his role as a leader of the African Church. We will situate Augustine's works within the framework of classical culture, late ancient politics and the early Christian Church, and discuss their enduring influence.

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.

This survey of Latin literature from the end of the republic through the mid empire traces the development of the major genres and literary movements in "Silver" Latin. We shall read in Latin selections from the Augustan poets, the historians of the empire, the tragedies and philosophical works of Seneca, Petronius, the epic poets, Statius' and later lyric, and a few late Latin works. Additional readings will include other Roman and 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 Latin literature.

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