Love and Hate in Ancient Greece and Rome
Previous Assignments

Reading & Overview

Reading Assignment: Longus, Daphnis and Chloe  While the classical literature we tend to study in courses such as this is serious and often deeply entwined with social and political changes and upheavals, there are also a number of Greek "romance novels" that tell of the adventures of extremely beautiful, innocent young lovers who, against all odds (robbers, pirates, wrongful enslavement, lustful kings and masters, shipwrecks, and wars) finally fidn their way back to each other and ultimate happiness.  Daphnis and Chloe is a short novel that evokes some of these trials and tribulations, while maintaining a light and humourous perspective.  But how light is it really?  And what does "light" mean when you deal with young love?

Cupid and Psyche: This story is from Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass (also called Metamorphoses) is told by an old woman to a young girl who has been kidnapped by robbers (along with the novel's hero, Lucius, who has been turned into a donkey).  The young girl eventually escapes, back to her beloved fiance, who is later murdered by a jealous rival.

Discussion Topics

1. Daphnis and Chloe  is a pastoral novel, which means that it is set in the countryside and portrays a romantic view of a harmonious society of shepherds -- which still, at times, has an undercurrent of sorrow.  This pastoral setting could be regarded as an imaginative world taht avoids -- or at least rewrites -- the tensions of the real world.  What elements of the story (or how it's told) emphasize this pastoral ideal?

2. Both Daphnis and Chloe and "Cupid and Psyche" are romantic stories in a way that the previous narratives we've seen have not been (although The Golden Ass is very different from Daphnis and Chloe overall).  In what ways are they similar, and in what ways are they different?   Consider the way love develops between the protagonists, the role of jealousy (who has it and what happens because of it), the sources of conflict that might prevent the young lovers' eventual marriage, and the character traits of the protagonists that help them achieve their eventual union.

3. Examine how the issues/themes of prophetic dreams, falling in love, homosexual characters, and slavery appear in Daphnis and Chloe.  How are they similar to / different from the occurrences of these themes in other works?

Terms and Names

Thursday, April 14

Reading & Overview

Reading Assignment: Seneca, Thyestes  The story of the cruel and unusual punishment Atreus inflicted on this presumptious brother Thyestes.

Discussion Topics

The story of Thyestes is obviously one of the least pleasant aspects of the stories of Mycenae, setting up the hatred of Aegistheus for Agamemnon.

What purpose does Seneca want to achieve in presenting this material?  What effect might it have on its audiences?

How are we meant to feel about the leading characters in the play (from contexts or commentary in the text)?

What techniques (descriptions, stagecraft, etc.) does Seneca use to create an effect?

There is controversy over whether this play was meant to be performed or simply read or read aloud.  What is your feeling about the effect of these different modes of "receiving" the story and its images?

Note: the translation we have has been somewhat adapted; the notes on the stagecraft are all modern and reflect how a modern version might be staged.  But they do arise,  more or less, from comments in the text that suggest how the scenes should be revealed.)

Terms and Names

Resources

Virgil's Aeneid: A comprehensive site -- one of the best things about it is its brief summaries of different (scholarly) interpretations of the Aeneid.

Virgil: A website devoted to him, with abundant bibliography and an ancient biography.

Virgil Project:  This is oriented toward Latin students, but it has a lot of interesting commentary (in English) linked from the Latin text.

Seneca Biography

About.com has a nice page on Seneca.

Thursday, April 7

Reading & Overview

Reading Assignment:  Virgil Aeneid (Stop at the beginning of the Nisus/Euryalus section.  I will bring in a section on Venus and Aenesa for us to look at in class as well.

(part I)) This version (of all Virgil readings) is incomplete (not all introductions are completed) but if you want to get started on it, here it is.)

Discussion Topics

Love presumably ranks below warfare, the public good, and the guidance of the gods here.  Is it only a foil to those things -- something that causes risk to these greater concerns?  Does it have any value in and of itself?

What role do the gods play in inspiring love and other emotions?  To what extent is love purely a result of these manipulations, and to what extent is it an innate human characteristic?

Terms and Names

Writing Assignment:

Write a brief (1-page) comparison of any two love stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, of which one or both should be from the part II of our Ovid readings.  You can consider things like willingness (or not) of lovers; power dynamics between lovers; ultimate result of the interaction; words/images in which love & related or resultant emotions are described; and whatever else seems to encapsulate the similarities & differenced between the stories you compare.  This is not meant to take more than class time to do, and will count as a quiz grade. 

Tuesday, April 5

Reading & Overview

Quiz :Quote identification from material since midterm through Ovid part I.

See below for the writing assignment to make up for class cancelled Thursday.  Some people have told me that they did not receive the email with the assignment.  Therefore it is OK to turn in the assignment on Thursday.

Reading Assignment: Ovid, The Art of Love:

• Read Book I.2-7 and any 6 other sections, of which at least 2 should be instructions to men, 2 instructions to men.  Be prepared to describe the content of the sections you choose to the class.

(For Thursday: Virgil Excerpts (part I)) This version (of all Virgil readings) is incomplete (not all introductions are completed) but if you want to get started on it, here it is.)

Terms and Names

Tuesday, March 29 and Thursday, March 31

Reading & Overview

• Ovid, Metamorphoses 1 (excerpts from books 1-3  (Tuesday)

• Ovid, Metamorphoses 2 (excerpts from books 4-end) (Thursday)

Discussion Topics

Metamorphoses I discussion questions

Terms and Names

Tuesday March 22

Reading & Overview

Cicero, On Friendship (De Amicitia)

Study Guide (overview of the text, comments on named characters/examples of friendship, focus questions about key aspects of friendship)

Terms and Names

Tuesday, March 8-Thursday, March 10

Reading & Overview

Change in reading assignments:  We will begin with Catullus (Tuesday) and other Latin Poets (Thursday), continue with Cicero et alii on love (Tuesday after break) and then Plautus (Thursday after break).

Tuesday:

• Catullus One of the most personable, accessible, funny, nasty, obscene, and lyrical of the poets of antiquity

• Catullus, Atthis (this is new and not linked from the assignments page)

Thursday:

• Propertius (Poems)

• Tibullus (Poems)

• Sulpicia (Poems)

Discussion Topics

• NEW DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• Lesbia, to whom Catullus addresses some of his most beautiful and deadliest poetry, is generally thought to be his name for Clodia Metella, the wife of a prominent Roman politician (and brother of another, less reputable one). 

  • In the Lesbia poems, what impression do you get of this relationship? 

  • Clearly many different feelings toward Lesbia are expressed, and in no particular order (in terms of the arrangement of the poems).  Do you get the sense of the progression of a real relationship, or of feelings changing within a less unstable relationship, or ...

• What role does friendship play in Catullus' persona as seen in the poems? 

• How does Catullus compare with Archilochus in terms of his views of friendship, enmity, and women?

• In the Attis poem, we see the results of religious passion.  Is this sort of passion always this dangerous?  What if any is the proper relationship between men and gods?

Terms and Names

Resources

Catullus Translation Page  This site collects translations of Catullus in various languages from translators all over the world.  (It is the source of many of the ones used in our excerpts.)  It also has a concise introduction to Catullus that situates him in Roman culture and in Greek/Roman literature.

VRoma Catullus resource Know Latin?  Then this page is for you ... OK, even if you don't ... This page has links to all of Catullus' poems in literal translations (with facing Latin); the poems are also indexed by subject and by the people/characters in them, and who they were or might have been.

Poems read with commentary: Translation, discussion, poem read in Latin:

• Catullus 5 (Lesbia)

• Catullus 101 (on his brother's death)

Tuesday March 1

Reading & Overview

Plato, Symposium:  A symposium in ancient Greece was a drinking party.  The guests were all men, except when hetaerae were invited.  The host (or host and guests together, as here) established how strong the wine was going to be, and each member of the symposium might have to contribute something for shared amusement -- a song, perhaps, or in the wilder kind, his shot at kottabos (throwing his wine lees at a target in the middle of the room) or, as in this case, an improptu speech.  The philosopher Plato wrote this in the 370's BCE, through a conversation that happened in the 400's, about an event that had happened some 20 years before.  There are layers in the narrative that match the layers of time: written by Plato, supposedly informed by the unnamed man who discusses it with Apollodorus, who had it from Aristodemus, who was there, but who was asleep for most of it; Socrates speech frames one he attributes to the hetaera Diotima. 

Midterm overview and essays  This link explains it all.

Discussion Topics

The speeches about love by the 5  guests  who speak before Socrates show very different perspectives on it.  Consider:

• Is love understood as cosmic or human or both?

• Are there different kinds of love?

• What does the speaker use to support his view of love?

• Does love have limitations in who can feel or express it?

• Is our distinction of "love vs. lust" upheld in any of these speeches, and if so, what cultural nuances support or contradict our own dichotomy?

• How does the audience receive each piece?

Does Plato present Socrates' speech as "right"?

Why does Plato bring Alcibiades into it so late -- does this give his commentary on love any special significance?

Terms and Names

Thursday Feb. 24

Reading & Overview

Euripides, Medea:

We'll continue with Medea and go over the "character scenarios" from the last class.

Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousae  Athenian comedy was obscene, slapstick, and oriented toward political and personal satire.  In this play, women who are going to celebrate the all-female festival of Thesmophoria are infiltrated by Euripides' father-in-law in drag, whose mission is to keep them from harming Euripides because of his unfavorable portrayals of women.

Discussion Topics

We're reading Thesmophoriazeuai not so much for personal expressions of love or hate, or even personal realtionships, but for more culturally based hostility or admiration of particular people or classes of people.  One of the key themes in this play is gender violations -- women in public space doing manly things, a normal heterosexual man in drag, and effeminate playwright ...

Where is mockery delivered, and against whom, and for what reasons?  Is this hostile, or are there hostile elements?  Does it signal tensions that might reflect cultural controversies? 

Terms and Names

Tuesday Feb. 22

Reading & Overview

FIRST ESSAY DUE

Euripides, Medea: Euripides was probably introduced the version of the Medea myth in which Medea kills her own children as revenge on Jason.  But this is the one everyone remembers!  Medea was one of the most significant female figures in Greek mythology, playing a role in several myth cycles, and even ending up married to Achilles in Elysium (a heroic afterlife something like paradise).

Discussion Topics

Medea Discussion Questions (pdf): These are "position statements," giving brief interpretations of the characters of Jason and Medea and their roles in the play.  Be prepared to support any of them with references to speeches and actions, and to formulate an interpretation of the play that includes a nuanced interaction between these central characters.

The Protevi study guide is a quick outline listing the choruses and episodes and their subjets (a little interpretation included).  It can be helpful in locating the particular interactions/statements you want to cite.

Terms and Names

Resources

• Dr. J's Introduction to Tragedy: and excellent brief introduction to Tragedy in performance, together with Aristotle's description of the elements of tragedy.
• Power Point with Images and Introductory Material
• John Protevi's guide to the structure of the Medea (1-page gudie with brief description of each scene and chorus)

Thursday Feb. 17

Reading & Overview

NOTE: FIRST ESSAY EXTENSION TILL TUESDAY FEB. 22 (New essay topics up; linked from Important Information)

Continuation of Agamemnon and Choephoroi. NOTE the discussion topic for Thursday (this class) requires structured preparation; see below.

Introduction to the Oresteia

Aeschylus, Agamamnon   Aeschylus was the earliest of the Athenian dramatists of the 5th century BCE, whose plays defined drama in the Western world.  Plays wer epresented in trilogies, and while most trilogies dealth with different topics, Aeschylus' Oresteia (of which Agamenon and Choephoroi are the first two segments) deal with the same topic: the cursed family of the house of Atreus.  Agamemnon deals with the return home of Agamemnon, leader of the Trojan War expedition, and his murder by his estranged wife, Clytemnestra.

Aeschylus, Choephoroi  The tale continues with the return home of Agamemnon's exiled son Orestes, and his murder of his mother and her lover in revenge for their murder of his father.

Discussion Topic

The Assignment: Choose four or more of the relationships listed below, and find evidence for their intricacies in the plays.  Consider things such as:

• What feelings do they have for one another (love, hate, resentment, loyalty, jealousy, neutrality, dependence, rebellion, etc.)

• In what ways do mixtures of feelings (assuming you find them) interact?

• Where and how do the characters express these feeling?  Or where, how and why do they conceal them?

• In what ways do these emotions come out in the action of the play?

Relationships:

• Clytemnestra and Aegisthus

• Clytemnestra and Agamemnon

• Cassandra and anybody

• Clytemnestra and Orestes

• Agamemnon and Orestes

• Clytemnestra and Electra

• Agamemnon and Electra

• Electra and Orestes

• Orestes and Pylades

NOTE: At the beginning of class I will pass around a sheet with these relationships listed; you will sign under which ones you have prepared and I will then call on you to share your ideas in class discussion.

Terms and Names

Resources

• NEW: Power Point with Images and Introductiry Material
• Cummings Study Guide: A very complete and helpful guide to the Oresteia, focusing on everything from characters to themes to the history and staging of Greek drama.
• Theatron: An interactive 3-D site with reconstructions of several ancient theaters, inclusing the theater of Dionysus in Athens where the Oresteia was first performed.  You have to download a 3D viewer for this, which takes about 15 seconds, but ir's worth it.

Tuesday Feb. 15

Discussion Topics

Agamemon:

1. Since our theme is Love and Hate -- how do the two emotions intersect and interact in this play?  Consider relationships between different characters, the expectations one might have of the sorts of relationships people in their position might have, and the ways in which these relationships actually play out.
2. For a general reading guide for the play, see the Agamemnon Study Guide of Dr. Barbara McManus

Choephori (Libation Bearers):

How do love and hate play out in this second generation?  Are hte motivations and actions of Orestes and Electra any more or less moral than those of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus?  In what ways are conventional family relationships transgressed here, and is love or hate (or neither) behind them?

For a general reading guide for the play, see the Choephoroi Study Guide of Dr. Barbara McManus

Resources

• Dr. D's Power Point on the Mycenaean Saga (from the Mythology Class): an overview of the events leading up to the conflicts of the Oresteia, an overview of the Oresteia, and a brief discription of other treatments of the story in literature, epecially drama; also containing a lot of images
• Dr. D's Power Point on the Trojan War (from the Mythology Class): various parts of thie more general presentation explain how the war began and Agamemnon's participation in it.

Writing Assignment

Use the class time to write up a brief discussion – 1 page – using quotes from the sources (Examples of Heroic Love, Aspasia, and Athenaeus) to answer the question: What do Greek sources suggest about the potentials for love and/or hate in domestic relationships between men and women?  (Possible questions: Can men and women get along in domestic relationships?  Under what circumstances?  Are some sorts of love or enmity not likely or even possible in domestic relationships?  Can friendships/loves between men and women equal those between men, in terms of their worth and moral value?  Etc.)  Of course you don’t have to address all of the sub-questions, but you may find one or several of them helpful in focusing your discussion.  This will count the same as a quiz and I will give simple letter grades.  Turn it in Tuesday.

Thursday Feb. 10

Reading & Overview

Assignment:  If you did not get the email with the writing assignment, it is linked below; turn it in Thursday (today)

Greek Lyric Poetry  Lyric poetry is literally "poetry sung to a lyre," so these poems were originally meant to be sung.  Greek lyric poetry is typically expressive of personal feelings and situations that call for emotional response; lyric poets are often highly individual in their expressions even while some motifs recur many times.  Many of these poems are not complete, but are fragments that were preserved because they were quoted in other texts, or painstakingly reconstructed from papyrus fragments.

Aeschylus, Agamamnon (begin; most discussion will be with Choephoroi next week)  Aeschylus was the earliest of the Athenian dramatists of the 5th century BCE, whose plays defined drama in the Western world.  Plays wer epresented in trilogies, and while most trilogies dealth with different topics, Aeschylus' Oresteia (of which Agamenon and Choephoroi are the first two segments) deal with the same topic: the cursed family of the house of Atreus. 

Discussion Topics

Note: There are discussion questions about the Athenaeus reading at the end of the document.  I will try to clean them up a little and post them here tomorrow as well.

Greek Lyric:

• Are the dynamics of erastes and eromenos apparent in the poetry in these excerpts?

• How would you characterize the love relationships between the characters/persona of the poems (e.g. fickle, passionate, aggressive, careless, exploitative, sensitive, loving, fleeting, lasting, ambivalent ....)

• Do different authors show different dynamics in their presentation of love?

• What words or images are used to evoke love (of whatever variety) in these poems?  How do they create their sense of passion?

Terms and Names

Resources

• Introduction to Sappho and Lyric poetry
• The Divine Sappho: A lot of very interesting and diverse links on Sappho, including several to ancient primary sources that discuss her and her poetic techniques
• 6 different translations of one Sappho poem into English
• Power point with images of erotic pursuit, erastes/eromenos relationships, and hetairai (includes some fairly graphic vase paintings)(Note: the one up today does not have labels for the images; I will put up an expanded version Monday with labels for the images)
• Summary of Olympian gods and goddesses (scroll down in the center column, unless you want to read a lot of philosophy)

Jan. 18-20

Reading & Overview

Homer, Iliad (excerpts)  In the excerpts linked here, we encounter a number of different relationships informed by love and by hate (temporary or festering):  Achilles (the Trojan war's greatest hero) and his friend Patroclus, Achilles and the Trojan war's chief leader, Agamemnon, Hector (the Trojans' greatest hero) and his wife Andromache, Paris (who started it all) and his kidnapped wife Helen, Hector and his parents, and Achilles and Hector (who killed Patroclus).   Our goal: to look at the nuances of love and hate and how it manifests in the relationships we see here -- parental, familial, marital, friendship, war-related or personal enmity.

Discussion Topics

Our goals are to investigate the relationships involving love and hate surrounding the characters of Achilles and Hector.  We will concentrate on Achilles on Tuesday, Hector on Thursday.

• Achilles is a warrior among warriors, in a camp with very few women, a masculine environment. 

• Hector is living in his native city, with a wife, parents, brothers, and fellow citizens.

For each of character, consider:

• What causes love?  What forms can it take?  How important is it to how a warrior leads his life?  How important is it to woman/wife/mother?

• What causes hate?  What other emotions or experiences are related to it or part of the processes through which it manifests?  What are the material/personal results of hatred?

• What relationships give this character his satisfaction and pleasure in life?  What relationships are painful to him?

Terms and Names

Resources

• Main characters in our Iliad excerpts
• Outline of the Iliad, with hyperlinks to explain/identify the main characters
• Power Point presentation on the Trojan war (not only the Iliad, but other aspects as well) from Dr. D's Mythology class
• Summary of Olympian gods and goddesses (scroll down in the center column, unless you want to read a lot of philosophy)

Tuesday Jan. 25

Reading & Overview

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter:  The Homeric Hymns are a collection of hymns to gods and goddesses written between 650 and 450 BCE.  The Hymn to Demeter is one of the oldest and longest, and it treats the central myth of Demeter and established the link between her daughter, Persephone, and the Underworld god Hades.  It also established the importance of the Eleusinian Mysteries, an immensely important and popular cult of Demeter near Athens, and explained how it began.  It shows the bonds between mother and daughter, and also the nature (or at least an aspect) of how marital bonds were formed.

Discussion Topics

There are two opposing relationships in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter: that between Demeter and her daughter Persephone, and that between Persephone and her husband (like it or not) Hades.  Our focus:

Demeter & Persephone:

• What is the fundamental nature of the mother-daughter bond?

• What will a mother do for her child?  How might Demeter's experiences/responses be paralleled in the real worl (ours or theirs)?

• How does Persephone weight her connection to her mother, in comparison to her relationship with Hades?

Hades and Persephone:

• Hades takes Persephone by violence -- in what ways does this characterize their relationship -- or does it?

• How does Persephone weight her connection to Hades, in comparison to her relationship with her mother?

Terms and Names

Tuesday Feb 1

Reading & Overview

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite:  ...

Discussion Topics

...NOTE: Our first quiz will be today.  It will consist of 10 quotations from the Iliad and Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and a list of 15 character names to choose from to attribute the quotes.

Terms and Names

Resources

• Summary of Olympian gods and goddesses (scroll down in the center column, unless you want to read a lot of philosophy)
• Power Point on Aphrodite from Dr. D's mythology class, with visuals

Tuesday Feb. 8

Reading & Overview

Work due: In lieu of class Feb 3, do the 1-page assignment detailed in the Feb. 2 email

Love, Hate, Gender, Sex (excerpts from different sources) (read in the order below)

• Examples of Heroic Love (a series of accounts of heroic love between men, and descriptions of its virtues)
• Aspasia (an article and a few primary sources about Aspasia, a famous hetaira and wife or mistress to Pericles, a very influential Athenian statesman)
• Athenaeus on Women  (a collection of anecdotes about women, marital relationships, love between men, the characteristics and wit of hetairai, and any number of other subjects)

Discussion Topics

Note: There are discussion questions about the Athenaeus reading at the end of the document.  I will try to clean them up a little and post them here tomorrow as well.

Examples of Heroic Love: What are the central elements of heroic love between men?  What cuases it?  What are its effects on the men involved?  Does it (necessarily) have sexual implications, or is that an element that may or may not be there, or is it definitely implied, in any or all sources?  Is there a substantial difference in how the different sources talk about love between men?

Aspasia:  What is Aspasia admired for, by her contemporaries?  In what ways is she threatening to the status quo?  In what particular ways is she considered wise?  How do love, sex and politics fit in with the ways her story is told?

Terms and Names

http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/oresteia.html

• Power point with images of erotic pursuit, erastes/eromenos relationships, and hetairai (includes some fairly graphic vase paintings)(Note: the one up today does not have labels for the images; I will put up an expanded version Monday with labels for the images)
• Summary of Olympian gods and goddesses (scroll down in the center column, unless you want to read a lot of philosophy)