BA Classics / Course details

Loss is an unavoidable circumstance and a universal marker of our common human existence.

The grieving process, albeit highly individual, can be influenced by elements such as cultural mores, rituals, and societal expectations. In this course, coming in close contact with literary representations of lived and mythological experiences, students will become familiar with how the Romans from the 2nd c. BCE to the 1st c. AD described, in a variety of texts, this condition akin to all humans. We will study how they comforted others and themselves on the misfortunes they suffered, the descriptive language and imagery they used to write about them, and what were the individual and social strategies of grieving and mourning enacted to cope with the pain engendered by the loss of a loved one, whether real or fictional.

This course-unit will delve into a range of selected texts that belong to the canon of Latin literature, in a variety of genres both in prose and in verse, and by a choice of authors. We will explore for instance the consolatory works of Cicero and the younger Seneca, the poignant laments in the epics of Virgil, Ovid, and Statius, individual poems that touch upon loss and the power of grief, such as Virgil’s Georgics and the poems of Catullus on the loss of his brother, as well as examples of Roman funerary epitaphs for loved ones, human and animal. Topics to cover in lectures and seminars include philosophical conceptualisations of grief, the rhetorical function of Roman consolationes (letters of consolation) and epicedia (funeral odes in verse), the prominently feminine sphere of lamentation, and public mourning vs. private displays of grief. All students will read and study selected texts in translation.

• Introduce students to several Roman authors’ portrayals of, and attitudes to, processes of mourning and grieving

• Introduce students to a variety of Latin texts from different authors and genres

• Enable appreciation of a crucial theme pervasive in Latin literature of the 2nd c. BCE – 1st c. AD, and its development through time

• Encourage students to establish connections between texts with different aims and audiences

• Engage in thorough and critical close reading of ancient texts in translation

• Have read in translation selections of a wide variety of Latin texts from the Classical, Neronian, and Flavian periods.
• Have a strong understanding on how Roman authors conceptualised the themes of grief and mourning in a selection of Latin prose and verse texts, and grasped their wider social functions.
• Have broadened their understanding of Roman attitudes to emotions from several perspectives (e.g., elite and non-elite; fictional vs. real).
• Have supplemented existing knowledge of foundational texts of Latin literature (e.g., Virgil’s Aeneid) from a particular thematic viewpoint of great import for the context of their production.

• To demonstrate solid knowledge of a wide selection of ancient primary texts centred on the themes of grief, mourning, and loss in Latin literature.
• To develop their ability to critically evaluate texts.
• To develop their ability to approach a topic from a particular yet complementary perspective to traditional panoptic approaches.

• To improve their ability to process large amounts of information from across a range of time periods and from a representative selection of Latin texts.
• To improve their time-management skills.
• To advance their ability to participate in group discussion.
• To advance their academic and library skills specific to Classics and Ancient History.

• To produce written analyses of texts in an informed and perceptive manner.
• To have improved their confidence in participating in group discussions.
• To have sharpened their ability to adapt to a wide range of unfamiliar ideas, and to have developed lateral thinking skills by adapting their perspective.
• To demonstrate independent study skills in research and the presentation of relevant findings, both oral and written.
• To demonstrate an ability to produce a strong and coherent argument supported by relevant evidence.

Summative Assessment 1: Textual Analysis (comparative discursive commentary) - 40%

Summative Assessment 2: Exam (essay-based) - 60%

Written feedback provided on Tii within 15 days of submission.

Baltussen, H. (ed.) (2013). Greek and Roman Consolations: Eight Studies of a Tradition and its Afterlife, Classical Press of Wales

Hope, V.M. and Huskinson, J. (2011) Memory and Mourning: Studies on Roman Death, Oxbow Books (available as an e-book)

Konstan, D. (2016). “Understanding Grief in Greece and Rome”, The Classical World, vol. 110, no. 1: pp. 3–30.