Syllabus and Schedule of Assignments: Details on course requirements, along with a week by week overview of topics and assignments

Class Notes: Lecture notes, arranged chronologically

Week two:

The Epic of Gilgamesh

• Background
• Nature of the hero, meaning of the epic: a prolegomenon

Weeks three through seven:

Homer's Iliad, Book One

• Background:
• The Story of the Trojan War
• Gods in Homer
• Heroes in Homer
• Some basics of Narrative Technique

Homer's Iliad, Books Two and Three

• The Anthropological Approach
• 1. Shame culture vs. Guilt culture
• 2. Ranked, or chiefdom, societies

Homer's Iliad, Book Four through Six

• Focus on Diomedes: the exemplum of the hero
• How did the ancient Greeks read the Iliad?

Homer's Iliad, Book Seven through Ten

• Hector and Book 6
• The Embassy to Achilles: the "heroic code"
• Extended Similes in Homer

Homer's Iliad, Book Eleven through Fifteen

• Type Scenes
• The Beguiling of Zeus
• Extended Similes in Homer, ctd.

Homer's Iliad, Book Sixteen through Nineteen

• The Death of Patroclus, Book 16: The importance of armor
• The Shield of Achilles, Book 18
• Homer and History

Homer's Iliad, Book Twenty through Twenty-three

• Gods and Men in the Iliad
• Narrative movement in the Iliad: Foreshadowing
• The Death of Hector

Homer's Iliad, Book Twenty-four

• "Second self" theme: Patroclus, Hector, Achilles, and the armor
• The Funeral Games of Patroclus (Book 23): the beginning of the re-humanizing of Achilles
• Book 24: Reconciliation: what it means to be human

Weeks eight through eleven:

Homer's Odyssey: Book One through Four

• From Iliad to Odyssey
• Homeric institutions
• Questions -- raised by the narrative technique
• The exemplum of Orestes, and the Death of Agamemnon

Homer's Odyssey: Book Five through Eight

• The exemplum of Orestes, and the Death of Agamemnon, ctd.
• Women as (problematic) paradigms in the Odyssey
• Helen
• Nausicaa
• Aphrodite

Homer's Odyssey: Book Nine through Twelve

• Feasting and Anti-feasting
• Feasting: the social code
• Anti-feasting: negative paradigms
• a. Circe
• b. Laestrygonians
• c. Cyclops
• Food and the Feast

Homer's Odyssey: Book Thirteen through Sixteen

• Similes in the Odyssey: the poet as poet
• Mythmaking and Storytelling in the Odyssey:
• ¶ Did the Greeks believe in their gods?
• ¶ Did the Greeks believe in their monsters?
• ¶ The poet as mythmaker
• ¶ Odysseus and his Cretan tales
• Sex and Morality in the Odyssey

Homer's Odyssey: Book Seventeen through Twenty

• Odysseus as storyteller: truth, lies, and ...
• Penelope and Odysseus: disguise and recognition

Homer's Odyssey: Book Twenty-one through Twenty-four

• The problem of the ending to the Odyssey
• Justice, gods, and revenge
• Recognition, acknowledgement, identity

Weeks eleven through fifteen:

Vergil's Aeneid: Book One

• Introduction to Augustan Rome
• Gods and Heroes: Roman Appropriations
• Vergil as a man: Aeneid as self-conscious art, as a national epic
• Gods: Disorder and Order: an example of the careful structure of events in the Aeneid
• Aeneas, book 1, and Homer's Odyssey: symbolism and intertextuality

Vergil's Aeneid: Books Two and Three

• More Background: Household gods, ancestor cult, pius Aeneas
• Book two. Flashback to Troy: why you can never go home again
• a. Trojan war from a Trojan point of view: Ulysses, Sinon
• b. Centrality of the family: the inner sanctum, death of Priam
• Book three. Search for a new home
• a. Odyssey as backdrop
• b. Helenus, Andromache, and "little Troy"

Vergil's Aeneid: Books Four through Six

• Vergil, myth, and history (again!)
• Book six. Begin at the ending: the gates of horn and ivory
• "Pessimists" versus "Optimists" debate
• Dido in the Underworld
• Book four. The "Tragedy of Dido"

Vergil's Aeneid: Books Seven through Nine

• Structure: outline
• Internal comparisons within the Aeneid
• More on Intertextuality: external comparisons: the Iliad once again

Vergil's Aeneid: Books Ten through Twelve

• Fate and the gods; free will and predestination
• Book 10: an exploration of the pious and impious
• Book 11: Camilla
• Book 12: Intertextuality revisited, & the Death of Turnus
  
  

Modern Heroes: How do Modern Heroes differ from Ancient Heroes?

Study Guides: Guides for study, review, discussion

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Homer's Iliad

• Introduction
• Book 1
• Books 2-3
• Book 4-6
• Books 7-10
• Books 11-15
• Books 16-19
• Books 20-23
• Book 24

Homer's Odyssey

• Background
• Books 1-4
• Books 5-8
• Books 9-12
• Books 13-16
• Books 17-20
• Books 21-24

Vergil's Aeneid

• Book 1
• Books 2-3
• Books 4-6
• Books 7-9
• Books 10-12

Detailed Summaries for the Iliad

Detailed Summaries for the Odyssey

Detailed Summaries for the Aeneid

Exams: Description of format, and some sample questions

Exam #1, on Homer's Iliad: Thursday, March 5

Exam #2, on Homer's Odyssey: Tuesday, April 7

Exam #3, on Vergil's Aeneid: Thursday, April 30

Final take-home essay: due Tuesday, May 5

Papers:

Reaction Paper #2

Reaction Paper #3

Reaction Paper #4

Essay #1: Some suggested questions, notes on format, links to external resources of importance

DUE Friday, February 27 at noon

Essay #2: Some suggested questions, notes on format, links to external resources of importance

DUE Wednesday, April 1 at 4 p.m.

Maps

The Eastern Mediterranean & Mesopotamia (useful for the Epic of Gilgamesh)

Homeric Geography

Mediterranean Basin

External Links of Interest: some useful links from around the world for the study of antiquity in general, and epic in particular

Perseus links (Perseus is a large-scale database with many texts and images relating to ancient Greece and Rome)

• Search for an English word in Homer (using Perseus)
• The English text of the Iliad from the Perseus Project (not a good translation)
• The English text of the Odyssey from the Perseus Project (not a good translation)

• Other links of interest from Perseus

• Link to Perseus home page (Bucknell now has access to its 13,000+ images):
• Link to Vases Browser
• Link to Primary Text Index: English Translations
• Link to Encyclopedia
• Link to Look-Up Tool (data from art and archaeology catalogs, encyclopedia, browser, English index, and English-Greek word search in a simple standard interface)
  

Other External Links from around the world

• Iliad Homepage at Reed College (some images are restricted: click CANCEL)
• The Trojan War Myth in Ancient Art (Temple University)

• Diotima: Materials for the study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World
• Timeline of Greek History and Literature (from the University of Victoria)

Link to Bertrand Library

These pages developed and maintained by William A. Johnson, Dept. of Classics, Bucknell University: wjohnson@bucknell.edu