Classes

Well, I have now had one meeting of each of the classes I'm taking this term. So far, I think that I'm going to enjoy each of them, though I'm on my beginning-of-the-semester high right now, so take that last pronouncement with a grain of salt.

Class one: Aegean and Ancient Greek Art and Archeology. We spend most of our class meetings on site actually looking at the Aegean and ancient Greek art and archeology. And the class is taught by an archeologist who has actually worked on some of the sites that we're going to be visiting. She also says that we're going to read the Lysistrata and read some of it out loud at a Greek amphitheater.

Class two: Intermediate Greek: Attic Prose. We spent the first meeting discussing what text we wanted to read this semester. As in, the professor asked us what texts we wanted to read, and then we had a discussion about the relative merits of reading something more obscure versus something that you're going to find on the Harvard Classics list. Then the professor left the room and the class got to decide what we wanted to read without the professor being there. We nearly decided to read Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, but because that was too obscure and there were people who were planning to go on in Classics, we finally settled on Xenophon's Memorabilia.

Class three: Advanced Latin. There were too many people registered for this class, so we split into two sections. Then we decided what text we were going to do this term. Our professor really pushed Pliny the Younger's Epistulae, so that's what we decided to read. We also decided to read Ovid's Amores, and some Horace if we have time. That didn't take the entire class period, so we spent the last half of class discussing what we've done in Athens so far, and our professor told us all about the different types of souvlaki, and never to pay more than 1.50-1.80 euro for one.

Class four: Ancient Greek Mythology and Religion. Let me just give you a reading list of the primary sources for this class: Aischylos The Orestia, Prometheus Bound, Sophokles Antigone, Oidipous Tyrannos, Euripides Bacchai, Iphigeneia in Aulis, Iphigeneia in Tauris, Hippolytos, Medeia, Homer The Iliad (selections), The Odyssey (selections), all in translation. This is going to be fun.

Erratum: the work I was discussing with my roommate was Cicero's Pro Caelio, not Plato's Crito. The editorial staff regrets the error.