Latin 201 has a double purpose. First, you will learn to read Latin with greater appreciation and pleasure. Second, you will be introduced to one of the greatest of all poems, the Aeneid of Vergil. The Aeneid is a powerful poem of loss and foundation, of love and war, of hope and remorse, of desire and duty, of the past and the future. We'll examine many different aspects of the Aeneid, including Vergil's debt (and tribute) to Homer and the political situation in which Vergil wrote under Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, and how it may have affected the poem. We'll read selections in Latin and the rest in English.
Last term you spent a good deal of time on forms and grammar review. This term the focus will expand, as we spend more of our time talking about the Aeneid as literature. We'll keep working on grammar as needed, though: in a battle scene, after all, you need to know who's stabbing whom, so recognizing nominatives and accusatives does have a purpose! As you do your homework, keep an eye on where you seem to have problems, and please let me know if a particular problem keeps tripping you up, such as subjunctives or uses of the ablative case. If one of you is having a problem with, say, ablative absolutes, it's a fair bet that many are having the same problem. Keep me informed, and we can work on problems together.
We're also going to be working explicitly on vocabulary this term, building up a larger vocabulary that will enable you (I know I keep repeating this) to read Latin with greater appreciation and pleasure. A larger vocabulary will also help you read faster. We'll focus on words Vergil actually uses, not on general vocabulary, for the maximum benefit in reading Vergil.
I've ordered three books, all of which should be in the College Bookstore:
Pharr's edition of the first six books of the Aeneid. This edition is specially designed for students reading the Aeneid for the first time. Pharr provides copious help with both vocabulary and grammar. Take some time to get to know the text and its special features, such as the pullout guide to the most common words in the Aeneid, which you can spread out next to the Latin as you read.
Allen Mandelbaum's translation of the entire Aeneid, since we'll read the whole poem in English. You can use a different translation, but do have one at hand; to me Mandelbaum’s translation is one of the best translations of any Latin work that has been made in the last fifty years.
Jordan's edition of Aeneid, Book 10.
I'll pass out other readings on paper or in electronic form.
FORMAT OF THE COURSEWe'll meet three times a week, once for 50 minutes and twice for 70 minutes: Note that all our class sessions will not take place in the same room or at the same time: Monday/Thursday from 9:50-11:00 in Green 428 and Wednesday from 10:10-11:00 in Green 430. There will be an assignment to read in Latin for almost every class. We'll translate the assignment in class as a basis for discussion and to clear up any questions you have about the Latin. For some classes there will also be handouts of passages from other authors (in translation), such as the Greek epic poets Homer and Apollonius of Rhodes, also to be used as the basis for analysis and discussion. We'll also look at various material about Augustus, ranging from his semi-autobiographical Achievements of the Divine Augustus to Suetonius' ancient biography of Augustus.
REQUIREMENTS OF THE COURSE1) Come to class prepared to discuss and to translate. Share your ideas with your classmates! Make lots of mistakes cheerfully.
2) Two hourly exams, which will include translation and essay(s); the first will be after about four or five weeks, the second about a month after that.
3) Final exam, during final exam week. One part of the final exam will cover the last third of the course; the other part will be a more general over-view of the whole course.
4) Various short written assignments (e.g., short papers, postings on the FirstClass conference) during the term. I can't say exactly what they will be until I have a clearer sense of your needs and interests.
GRADINGThe final grade will be computed as follows:
A note on class participation: Class participation is crucial, just like the hourlies or the final exam. Different people may participate in different ways (e.g., talking in class discussions, 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.
INSTRUCTORRay Starr (Ray, Mr. Starr, Professor Starr)
Office: 301 Founders
Phone: 2627; home: 781/235-1514 (but 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 first! I'm in my office a good deal, so 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 Barbara Boger, Director of Programs for the Learning and Teaching Center are available in Clapp Library in the Learning and Teaching Center to help you in arranging these accommodations.
HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND LATIN
Vergil, the Perseus Project, and the Vergil Project.Through the Perseus Project (homepage at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ ) you can read Vergil on screen with full grammatical and dictionary support. For instance, you can click on the first word of the first line, and Perseus will identify the form for you and give you the definition. For a sample, go to:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0055
This will, obviously, significantly speed up our reading and allow us to read more Latin than we could otherwise (and you won't develop outsized thumb muscles from flipping through your dictionaries). Perseus takes some getting used to before you can use it easily, but it's worth it. You'll also want to explore The Vergil Project at the University of Pennsylvania, which defines words and even identifies the grammatical construction (there's also an online commentary)--the only hitch is that it's only available for part of the Aeneid:
http://vergil.classics.upenn.edu/
Vergil in electronic form.A downloadable electronic text of the Aeneid can be handy in various ways, some of them very simple, such as printing out double-spaced copies of the text to use for homework or review. You'll find the electronic text in a folder in the course FirstClass conference.
The Latin 201 FirstClass conferenceWe'll use this conference frequently during the term. Feel free to post questions, comments, announcements of events you're in (e.g., plays, music, sports)--whatever seems reasonable. I'll post various things there rather than to the www.
The Digital Latin LexiconThe Digital Latin Lexicon is no longer available through the web, but I'll figure out a way to get you copies. It looks up words as you type, and you can tell it to make a list of the words you've looked up in a reading session: your own personal vocabulary list!