NOTE: Almost all tutorial descriptions are taken from the University of Oxford website and are copyright University of Oxford.  Only the selection and matter for tutorials which reflect the research interests of SCIO staff members are copyright SCIO.

Tutorial course open to all students, whether or not they have previously studied Greek or Latin. 

Classical Literature
This course is designed to provide students with an introduction to classical literature.  The emphasis will be on reading closely and interpreting works which may be unfamiliar and understanding them in their own social context. Texts (which are studied in translation) are chosen from among the following authors: Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Callimachus, Theocritus, Lucretius, Catullus, Horace, Vergil, Propertius, Ovid, Tacitus.

Tutorial courses for students with at least one year’s undergraduate level study of Latin and/or Greek, as appropriate.

Greek and Roman history

The Early Greek World and Herodotus’ Histories, from 776 BC to 479 BC

This paper considers Herodotus and the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians.  The stories which fifth-century and later Greeks told of the events of the three centuries before the Persian Wars shaped their perceptions of their own identities and their political agenda: stories of tyranny formed the backdrop to claims of freedom, stories of warfare and alliance shaped friendships and enmity between cities, stories of settlement abroad shaped claims to goodwill, political support and economic advantage across the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Mediterranean as a whole. Just as individual city-states shaped their own claims to distinctness by the stories they told about other city-states, so the Greeks as a whole defined what it was to be Greek by the stories they told about non-Greeks, especially the Persians. By studying these Greek traditions and the ways in which they intersect with other evidence, we can recover the story of the formation of the Greek state and of Greek political self-consciousness, which we trace as far as the establishment of democracy at Athens following the reforms of Kleisthenes.

Thucydides and the Greek World: Greek History from 479 BC to 403 BC

Victory over Persia led to the rise of the Athenian Empire, conflict between Athens and Sparta, and Sparta’s eventual victory in the Peloponnesian War. These years cover the transition from archaic to classical Greece, the Periclean age of Athens, the masterpieces of art, architecture, and literature which are the supreme legacies of the Greek world, the contrasting lifestyles of Sparta and democratic Athens, and the careers of Alcibiades, Socrates, and their famous contemporaries. They are studied in Thucydides’ History.  Thucydides’ own bias and his shaping of his History remain among the stormcentres of the study of antiquity and are of far-reaching significance for our understanding of the moral, intellectual, and political changes in the Greek world.

The End of the Roman Republic: Cicero and Sallust, from 133 BC to 50 BC

This is the period when, in the view of the elder Seneca, Rome finally grew up. For Appian, as for many writers under the Principate, it was characterised by violence, civil war, and other political strains which were themselves the result of Rome’s phenomenal success. There were major changes in agriculture and land-tenure, the city of Rome began to be transformed into a city fit to be the capital of the world, Italy became unified as a land of Roman citizens, and Roman culture and intellectual life was dramatically enriched by Hellenic infusions. Meanwhile the foundation of these developments, the empire, continued to expand in spite of the military distractions of civil war. In the end the speed of the transformation could not be reconciled with republican government. For the latter part of this period our knowledge is of a different quality from that of almost any other period of Roman history thanks to the correspondence, speeches and other works of Cicero, Caesar’s Gallic War, and the surviving works of Sallust.

Rome, Italy, and Empire under Caesar, the Triumvirate, and Early Principate, from 46 BC to AD 54

This period presents issues of uneasy adjustment and faltering responses to shattering social and political change. The Civil War raised problems about the character of Urbs and Orbis, city and world, and their relations. Caesar drew his own solutions from the widest cultural range. The central problems of this subject concern the dynasty, charisma, and authority of the Roman Emperor, the institutions of the Roman provincial empire, and the most intensely creative age of Roman art and Latin literature, and how these were related. The sequel addresses three very different rulers, Tiberius, Gaius Caligula, and Claudius, whose reigns did much to shape the idea of an imperial system and its historiography, which we sample through Tacitus, the biographies of Suetonius, and Seneca’s sketch of Claudius’ death and deification.

The World of Tacitus and Pliny: Politics and Culture from AD 54 to AD 138

The period begins with the accession of Nero, the ill-starred emperor. Following his fall, and the military and political convulsions of the ‘year of the four emperors’ (AD 69), Vespasian emerged triumphant and established the Flavian dynasty which ended with the assassination of Domitian in AD 96. The last part of the period covers the reigns of Trajan, who had military and expansionist ideals, and Hadrian, a man of literary and aesthetic interests who sought the consolidation of the empire. Despite serious disturbances and wars, the ‘Roman peace’ extended over virtually the whole of the Mediterranean world and the empire reached its highest point of social, economic, and cultural development. At the same time Graeco-Roman paganism underwent profound change under the impact of Christianity. The evidence of literary and historical writers, documents (inscriptions and papyri), coins, and archaeology offers a multi-faceted picture of the impact of Roman rule on the Mediterranean world.

Athenian Democracy in the Classical Age

This subject includes the constitutional, social, economic and cultural history of Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, including such topics as the workings of the Assembly and Council, military organization, the development of political leadership, the workings of the Athenian law courts, legal procedure and the law code, citizenship, theoretical attitudes to democracy and its alternatives, public festivals and public entertainments, attitudes to religion and the rights of the individual, freedom of speech, kinship organizations and the position of women, the provision of education, the status of metics, slavery, the workings of taxation and liturgy systems, the organization of trade (especially the corn trade), the characteristics of Athenian manufacturing industry, and the workings of the silver mines.

Alexander the Great and His Early Successors, from 336 BC to 302 BC

Aged 25, Alexander the Great defeated the Persian Empire and became the richest ruler in the world.  The self-proclaimed rival of Achilles, he led an army bigger than any known in antiquity and reached India.  He died aged 32, leaving his generals with conquests from India to Egypt, no designated heir, and an uncertain tradition of his plans.  This subject explores the controversial personality and resources of the conqueror, the impact of his conquests on Asia, the nature and importance of Macedonian tradition, and the image and achievements of his early successors.  The career which changed the scope of Greek history is still a matter of dispute both for its immediate legacy and for the evidence on which it rests.

Cicero: Politics and Thought in the Late Republic

This subject examines the life and the works of Marcus Tullius Cicero, one of the major political figures of the later Roman Republic and one of the greatest writers Rome ever produced. Cicero’s letters and speeches are the major source for the political history of his time and his rhetorical and philosophical treatises the principal evidence for the cultural history of the period.  His writings concern the major political issues of his time, such as the nature of the Roman constitution and of Roman imperialism, but also reveal his religious and moral attitudes. They concern his political and literary ambitions, but also the management of his property and of his difficult relatives. Above all, they show him anxious to believe and demonstrate the value of a broad and liberal education to the orator and statesman. The texts for the subject include a selection of Cicero’s own writings, some letters addressed to him by notable figures such as Caesar, Cato, and Brutus, a contemporary biography of Atticus, Cicero’s closest friend and favourite addressee, and an account by the historian Sallust of the conspiracy that Cicero helped to suppress in his consulship.

Religions in the Greek and Roman World, from c.30 BC to AD 312

The aim of the course is to study the workings and concepts of Greek and Roman religions, including relevant aspects of Judaism, Christianity, and other elective cults, between around 30 BC and AD 312. You will be encouraged to display an understanding of relevant modern theories of religions, and to be familiar with relevant literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence.

Sexuality and Gender in Greece and Rome

This paper considers topics as varied as misogyny in archaic Greek poetry, the difference made to women’s lives by the rise of Christianity, laws relating to property rights, marriage, adultery, ideas of masculinity, and the social significance of Greek male homosexuality. Few areas of classical studies have seen quite such a transformation in the last 30 years as this one, and you will have the chance to study not just an extremely diverse range of ancient texts, but also some very lively secondary literature.

Roman Architecture

Architecture was the Roman art par excellence, and Roman buildings provide some of the most impressive and best preserved monuments from the ancient world. The course studies the materials, technology, and functions of the buildings as well as their appearance and effect, from the Republic to the Tetrarchy, in Italy and the provinces as well as in Rome itself.

History of the Jews in the Graeco-Roman Period

This course compasses a revolutionary period in the history of the Jewish people, from around 200 BC to AD 312, when contacts with first Hellenistic and then Roman culture and empire wrought great changes in Jewish fortunes and thought. Topics covered include the causes of the Maccabean revolt, Judaism and Hellenism, the rise and rule of Herod the Great, the first Christians, varieties of Judaism in 1st-century Judaea, Jewish revolts against the Romans, the rise of Rabbinic Judaism, the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Jewish Apocalypticism.

Greek and Latin Language

Greek Grammar

This course will aim improve the student’s knowledge of Greek grammar and will be tailored to meet the needs and background of the individual student.

Greek Reading

This course will aim improve the student’s knowledge of Greek texts and will be tailored to meet the needs and background of the individual student.

Latin Grammar

This course will aim improve the student’s knowledge of Latin grammar and will be tailored to meet the needs and background of the individual student.

Latin Reading

This course will aim improve the student’s knowledge of Latin texts and will be tailored to meet the needs and background of the individual student.

Greek and Roman Literature

Iliad, Homer

This course involves study of the Iliad as a poem generated by an oral tradition, and consideration of the appropriate critical methods to apply to such a work. You are expected to consider aspects such as narrative technique, structure, characterisation, heroic values, and the poetic representation of the divine world in relation to the human.  You will be expected to know the whole poem and will study four key books (I, IX, XXII, and XXIV).

Aeneid, Virgil

This course involves study of the Aeneid both as a product of Augustan Rome and as a poem which has transcended its historical context. Besides examining plot, characterization, and style, you are expected to consider how the epic genre has developed since Homer, and how other forms of literature (including historical prose) have influenced the poem. Much attention is paid to the political and ideological factors shaping the poem. You will be expected to know the whole Aeneid and in particular books I, IV, and VI.

Aristophanes’ Political Comedy

The course studies Athenian politics and culture in the later 5th century BC as represented in the comedies of Aristophanes. Its subject is Old Comedy as a distorting mirror of the major events and currents of the day – the new-style politicians (Cleon and others), the new intellectuals (the ‘sophists’), strains in traditional religion, the role of women, the Peloponnesian War, and social conflict in the city and countryside. The plays prescribed for study are Acharnians and Lysistrata and Frogs.  Acharnians and Lysistrata are often interpreted as ‘anti-war’ plays, and this is one of the ‘political’ aspects you need to examine, but you must also be aware of the relation of politician and general, free and slave, ans male and female in Aristophanic Athens, as well as the freedom allowed to the comedians and the values and antagonisms of a polis at war.

Greek Literature of the 5th Century BC

This paper aims to interrelate all kinds of literature of the 5th century, and to set that literature in its cultural context.  Texts by Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Herodotus are studied and the follow topics may be followed:

(a) “Literary”: genre, choral lyric, theatre, rhetoric, characterisation, diction.
(b) “Intellectual”: medicine, literacy, knowledge of myth, the “sophistic movement”.
(c) “Religious”: festivals, oracles, hero cult, eschatology, questioning of traditional religion.
(d) “anthropological”: gender, ethnicity, democracy, social divisions, inter-city relations, hellenism.
(e) “historical”: Persian wars, slaves, the Athenian arche, stasis, Athenian decision-making.

Greek Lyric and Elegiac Poetry

This subject offers an opportunity to study poetry of the period from c. 700 to 500 BC other than Homer’s. The works covered are shorter than Homer’s epics, but extremely diverse: the choral ‘maiden songs’ of Alcman performed at a Spartan festival, the monodies of Sappho (on marriage, family, and passion), of Anacreon (on sex, drinking, and the symposium), and of Alcaeus (on politics and drinking, but also pious hymns); the poems of Stesichorus narrating the run-up and aftermath of the Trojan war and the feats of Heracles; the elegies and invective iamboi (some philosophical, some more earthy) of Archilochus; the elegiac battle exhortations of Tyrtaeus, the political elegies and iamboi of Solon; and so on. The subject has been reinvigorated by new questions about performance of the different genres, the voice of the poet and his or her mode of preservation (oral vs. written), and by new evidence: our knowledge of Archilochus, Stesichorus, and Simonides has been most strikingly changed by discoveries of quite recent years.

Pindar and Bacchylides

Pindar was the greatest lyric poet of Greece, and the only one whose works survive in a continuous manuscreipt tradition. His extant poems, addressed to the kings and nobles of the Greek world of the early-to-mid 5th century BC, are "epinicians", i.e. odes celebrating victories in the games at the major festivals of which the latest date from about 446 BC. Besides praise of the victor, they usually include an extended myth, often representing the standard of excellence achieved by the victor’s heroic ancestors or his city. The myths are paradigms of heroic virtue, often brilliantly told and involving many subtle connections with the addressee’s family, career, and community. Pindar’s lyrical majesty is comparable to the richest choral odes of tragedy, especially his contemporary, Aeschylus. The paper also offers a glimpse of his work in other genres. Bacchylides is a fellow practictioner of the epinician genre. Generally regarded as Pindar’s inferior, his style is simpler and more direct.

Aeschylus

The dense texture of the Oresteia, both in thought and in language, means that it lends itself to detailed discussion and argument from many angles. An important document in the history of Greek religion, it is also a key text for the political and constitutional history of Athens and for the history of democracy. Questions of staging and of characterisation, and of imagery and of the interplay of speech and song, are also among those suggested by the text. The Seven, rich in problems, has high poetic qualities and is interesting as the resolution (hotly controversial in recent scholarship) of another trilogy. The supporting plays make possible a survey of the complete extant work of Aeschylus. Persae is unique among the tragedies we possess in its relation to real history (and to the account of it by Herodotus); Supplices is a rich and lyrical play with acutely dramatic situations and splendid lyrics.

Euripides

Euripides was the most tragic of the poets, the tragedian whose dramas worked best on the stage, and the first to make his characters speak like ordinary people. He was the dramatist whose works were most often illustrated in ancient art, and which are still most often produced in the modern theatre.  His tragedies test the boundaries of genre, undermine their spectators’ received opinions, shock their moral sensibilities, test their knowledge of radically new philosophy, and push them to the limits of their emotional endurance. Dying children, sexually driven women, drunk and demented heroes, a singing eunuch, a fictional baby, a ghost and an Egyptian high priestess - study Euripides and you will meet them all. The set texts begin with his earliest extant play (Alcestis) and end with one of his last (Orestes), allowing a detailed exploration of the way in which the interests of this uniquely seductive theatrical writer evolved over a period of three decades.

Plato

The power and elusiveness of logos are central concerns of the sophists and other writers of Plato’s youth (Euripides, Aristophanes). This option concentrates on Plato’s attitude to literature, rhetoric, and the arts, including some of his notorious criticisms of poetry and traditional education. The Phaedrus begins with a series of speeches (not unlike the Symposium) moving towards an ideal form of homosexual love that is closely linked to the notion of philosophical teaching and is, thus, contrasted with the deficiencies of contemporary rhetoric. In the end, the discussion turns into a fundamental assessment of the right use of logoi, especially of the philosopher’s attitude to writing. In the Gorgias, Socrates is confronted by the ambitious and insolent Callicles, a disciple of the sophists, whose goal is tyrannical or oligarchic power. Book 10 of the Republic renews the critique of poetry begun in books 2 and 3 of the dialogue, and related questions lie at the heart of Socrates’ conversation with a professional rhapsode in the Ion. All these works raise crucial questions about the nature and purpose of Plato’s writing.

Hellenistic Poetry

The 3rd century BC introduced new intellectual and literary emphases. Scholars collected, edited and explained the Greek literary inheritance; poets (often scholars themselves) reworked that inheritance to produce a poetry of small-scale forms, refined diction, and complex allusive textures. There was new-style epic (Apollonius Rhodius), and a new genre of pocket-epic, which diversified by digression (Moschus, Europa) and domesticated the heroic (Callimachus, Hecale). There were new hymns; a new civilised invective (Callimachus, Iambi) and a new pseudo-realism (Herodas); a transposition of the old lyric into the brilliant miniature of the epigram. Greek roots grew in tradition as well as in literature, so Callimachus’ Aetia traced the origins of festivals and rituals with ironised erudition. Theocritus spanned the whole scene.

Latin Literature of the 1st Century BC

This course pays special attention to the following texts: Lucretius Book 1, Catullus 61–4 and 68, Cicero Pro Caelio, Virgil Eclogues, Horace Odes Book 1, and Propertius Book 4.   Candidates will consider such topics as: the influence of preceding Greek literature; the place of women in society and texts; questions of politics, patronage and power; and the relation between Latin literature and philosophy and religion; the ‘book’ both as a technological and artistic fact; and literary questions of style, imagery, symbolism, allegory, convention, and originality.

Latin Didactic Poetry

This option involves the detailed study of Books 3 and 6 of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, the whole of Virgil’s Georgics, and Book 1 of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, with supplementary reading from Lucretius I, Hesiod Works and Days, and Aratus Phaenomena 1–136, 733–1154.  The aim is to explore the three major didactic poems of the late Republic / early Empire in relation to each other and against the background of the didactic tradition. What is it that these poems ‘teach’? What themes and preoccupations are shared by these apparently very different didactics, and how does each react to its predecessor? How does this relate to our view of Roman culture and politics at the moment of transition from Republic to Empire? And how can technical or quasi-technical material make poetry? Close reading will be required for many of these questions.

Latin Satire

Verse satire was the one poetic genre which Romans (rightly) claimed as their own (Quintilian 10.1.93).   The first Roman satirist to come down to us in any substantial form is Lucilius (c. 180–102/1 BC), who established the hexameter as the metre of Latin verse satire, and invective against the misbehaviour of contemporaries as one of its major concerns.  In his Satires, published 35 and 30 BC, Horace adopts some Lucilian invective, but in general vices are mocked rather than excoriated, and a pleasing picture is given of Horace and his friends in the circle of Maecenas.  Persius, writing under Nero, has evident Stoic moral interests, and his use of language and imagery is difficult but fascinating.  Juvenal, probably writing in the first quarter of the 2nd century, shares Lucilius’ taste for invective, but largely attacks the dead, a safer tactic.  He is also interested in the literary possibilities of the satiric genre: his language and use of the hexameter is more elevated than that of Horace or Persius, and the 661-line satire on women specifically rivals and challenges ‘higher’ genres.  If you are interested in the seamier side of Roman life, popular moralising or literary parody and criticism, this subject will have much appeal.

Cicero the Orator

This option gives the opportunity to study a wide range of Cicero’s speeches, varied in date (from the youthful extravagances of the Pro Roscio Amerino to the hectic atmosphere of the Philippics), background (from the ‘free’ Republic to Caesar’s dictatorship and beyond), type (forensic, deliberative, quasi-panegyric), and tone (from the high comedy of parts of the Pro Caelio to the polite insinuations of the Pro Marcello). The b texts also include parts of the anonymous treatise Ad Herennium, which codifies the rhetorical precepts on which Cicero was trained, and his own De Oratore, which throws light on his attitude to rhetorical theory and practice.

Horace

Horace’s first three books of Odes were probably published in 23 BC, the hexameter Epistles some three years later. In both works Horace attempts something no poet in Rome had attempted before. The Odes engage dynamically with archaic and classical Greek lyric (e.g. Alcaeus, Sappho, Pindar, Anacreon) and Hellenistic epigram (e.g., Posidippus, Leonidas of Tarentum), refocusing their themes of war, love, praise, friendship, and immortality for a modern audience in a new society. The Epistles are ‘letters’ to a wide variety of people, from the very low (his bailiff) to the very high (ultimately, Augustus) and in them Horace constructs an image of how social and personal relationships work, and explores the role of philosophy, poetry, and amicitia in the Rome of Augustus.  The earlier Satires and Epodes are likewise innovative and bold.  Odes IV, published ten years after I–III and after Horace had been commissioned to write the hymn for the Ludi Saeculares of 17 BC, shows the status and power of the poet Horace in a new light.

Ovid

Even when Ovid’s poems seem to fall into a recognised category, the overall effect may be unlike that of any other known work. In the Metamorphoses the range of mood, style, and subject matter is astonishing, from the Creation to Acis and Galatea, from the oriental exoticism of Pyramus and Thisbe to the naive Italian apple-orchard girl Pomona. His wit and shrewd psychology in matters of love, apparent in the youthful Amores, are equally prominent in the double Heroides. Acontius and Cydippe came from Ovid’s favourite Greek poet, Callimachus, who also inspired the Fasti; following Callimachus’ Aetia, Ovid takes a detached look at Rome’s religious calendar. His exile poetry (Tristia 1.3, Ovid’s last night in Rome, is memorable) deserves its renewed attention. Ovid constantly provides paradoxes: the poet who suffered Augustus’ displeasure was in some ways more Augustan than Virgil or Horace; the man banished for allegedly undermining marriage expresses touching devotion in letters to his wife.

Ancient Literary Criticism

This option introduces themes such as the function of literature in society, inspiration, originality, and criteria of excellence and decorum. These are linked to readings of major classical texts.

1. Aristotle’s Poetics raises questions of interpretation of terms such as mimesis, katharsis, hamartia and peripeteia. Does the theory of tragedy illuminate 5th-century drama, and why is plot so pre-eminent? 

2. Horace is himself a major poet and champions high standards of poetic excellence in the age of Augustus. He is more personal and polemical in the Satires and Epistles, and more elusive in the Ars Poetica, with its challenging focus on drama.

3. In Tacitus’ Dialogus different speakers offer different reasons for the decline of oratory in an age of imperial power and political informers. Can we determine Tacitus’ own position?

4.Longinus’ On the Sublime isolates what makes the greatest literature great, a strong emotional impact illustrated from a strikingly wide variety of authors and genres. He highlights the author’s own innate powers, and his analysis includes some of the best practical criticism in antiquity.