GOALS OF THE COURSE

Uncovering the Ancient World will introduce you to ancient Greece and Rome. You'll leave the course with a general grasp of Greece and Rome, but you'll also get a sense of the vitality and power and challenge of the ancient world and the questions you can ask about it. Athens' Acropolis and its temples, for instance, were one of the glories of the ancient world, yet Athens' power was fueled by its domination of other city-states. Romans insisted on the importance of ethics and morality, yet the Roman economy was firmly founded on slavery: how can these statements be understood together? The course's goal is not to debunk Athens and Rome but to understand them as complicated societies that have influenced the western tradition.

TEXTS

I've ordered several books, all of which should be in the College Bookstore:

• Euripides I, including the tragedies Medea and Hippolytus, two famous tragedies based on mythological stories.
• Plato, Symposium: one of the most famous works by one of the most famous Greek philosophers.
• Aristophanes, Lysistrata. An ancient Greek comedy: the women of the warring states of Athens and Sparta refuse to have sex with their husbands until a peace treaty is concluded.
• Plautus, Four Comedies, including The Braggart Soldier.
• Ovid, The Art of Love, including Ovid's famous mock-advice poem on how to have an affair in Rome.
• Petronius, The Satyricon. One of Rome's most famous novels.
• Apuleius, The Golden Ass, a famous novel, in which a man is turned into an ass.
• Etienne's Pompeii (corny in places, but useful information).

(Yes, I did use the word "famous" more often perhaps than I would have if this were Writing 125, but the works are famous!)

Many of the texts we'll use will be electronic texts, accessible through links on the Syllabus web page or on e-reserve through the course FirstClass conference. I won't pass out copies of these texts in class: you'll be responsible for printing out your own copies. I strongly recommend printing out the electronic texts for easy use in class and for easy reference as you study, take notes, and review for exams.

FORMAT OF THE COURSE

We'll meet twice a week for 70 minutes. There will be a homework assignment for each class session, but what that homework is will vary widely from class to class. Sometimes we'll read ancient works, sometimes we'll study material on web sites, sometimes we'll read modern scholarly articles, sometimes we'll do projects to help us think about the evidence we're using. For example, the Romans put up many inscriptions on stone, and we still have some of them: what can we learn from them about daily life in Rome? what are the problems with using inscriptions as evidence? what would we know about Wellesley College if we had only ten inscriptions from around the campus? would we know it was a women's college? In class we'll talk about the homework, and I'll give mini-lectures to flesh out the material (e.g., historical background, cultural practices). We'll also be using the course's FirstClass conference regularly throughout the term.

REQUIREMENTS OF THE COURSE

1) Come to class prepared. Share your ideas with your classmates! Ask questions and question answers. If you want to know more about something, it's very likely that other members of the class do, too.

2) Midterm exam, covering the first (Greek) half of the course.

3) Final exam: self-scheduled, during final exam week. The first part of the final will cover the material since the midterm (the Roman half of the course); the second part will involve material from the whole term.

4) Two short (2-3 page) papers.

GRADING

The final grade will be computed this way:

• Midterm exam--------------25%
• Final exam-------------------35%
• Two short papers-----------25% (total for the two papers; 12.5% each)
• Class participation---------15%

A note on class participation: Class participation is crucial, just like the midterm, the final exam, or the papers. Different people may participate in different ways (e.g., talking in class, posting on the FirstClass conference), and that's fine (people are different), but two things are basic: be in class and be prepared. If you cut a lot of classes or are frequently unprepared, the class participation portion of your final grade will go up and your final grade will go down.

INSTRUCTOR

Mr. Starr/Professor Starr/Ray. I'm comfortable with any of those: whichever you feel comfortable with is fine with me. Some students feel comfortable calling faculty by their first name, while other students prefer to use Mr/Ms/Professor.

Office: 301 Founders

Email: In FirstClass, Raymond J. Starr. From outside of FirstClass: rstarr@wellesley.edu

Phone: 2627; home: 508/359-5288 (please not before 8am or after 8 pm)

Office hours: I'll announce them in class. Please feel free to come by and talk: you don't have to have a problem! And don't feel like you have to wait for a Formal Office Hour to talk.

If you have a disability and need disability-related classroom or testing accomodations, please see me as soon as possible so we can make the arrangements (it's easy to make the arrangements). Jim Wice, Director of Disabled Students Services, and Veronica Darer are available in Clapp Library in the Learning and Teaching Center to assist you in arranging these accommodations.