Great Books, Big Ideas from Antiquity:Greece CLA 56 Tuesdays, 7:00 – 8:50 pm Christopher B. Krebs 10 weeks, Sep 25—Dec 4

Great books, big ideas from antiquity Why read? Why read texts written hundreds, even thousands of years ago in not spoken anymore? Because of their formal beauty; because they captured an ephemeral sentiment or formulated an idea for all time; because is not just built on them but with them. We owe to the Homeric poems the notion of an , to and his companions the ‘tragic,’ to the idea of history as an investigation of the past, to the art of rhetoric, to countless tales and myths and parables (of Icarus, say, or Pygmalion), and to and realpolitik. This course will, in the course of ten weeks, cover the first half of our journey through ancient from to St. Augustine. We will read, mostly in selection, the , Odyssey, (Ps)Aeschylus’ Prometheus bound, ’ Antigone, Herodotus, Thucydides, and ’s Phaedrus. Every week will focus on one particular text and concept or method, and by the end, participants should have an educated idea of the history of Greek literature, in its archaic and classic periods, a sample of its enduring literary masterpieces, and a notion of some of the major contributions Greece made to western civilization. We will also develop a catalogue of an historian’s ‘cardinal sins’ and reflect on what it is more precisely we learn from studying the classics. All ‘additional ’ will be distributed in advance of the respective class.

PRELIMINARY SYLLABUS

1. Week (Sep 25): “Swift-footed (hot-tempered) Achilles:” Homer, Iliad, first half, at least 1, 2 (without the catalogue of the ships), 6, 10

Ø Concepts, topics: orality; shame-honor culture (No additional readings)

2. Week (Oct 2): “To always be the best and preeminent over all:” Homer, Iliad, second half, at least 16, 18, 22, 24 Ø Concepts, topics: the notion of the hero, then (and now?) (Additional : Gregory Nagy, “The Best of the Achaeans” (chapter 2). Maynard Solomon, “The Seventh Symphony and the Rhythms of Antiquity.”)

3. Week (Oct 09): “Son of Laertes, versatile Odysseus, after these years with me, you still desire your old home?” Homer, Odyssey, at least 5, 9, 11, 14, 23

Ø Concepts, topics: travel towards self-discovery (nostos) Great Books, Big Ideas from Antiquity:Greece CLA 56 Tuesdays, 7:00 – 8:50 pm Christopher B. Krebs 10 weeks, Sep 25—Dec 4

(Additional reading: There’s an interactive map of Odysseus’ journey1 Further readings: A. Tennysson, Olysses,2 Constantine P. Cavafy, Ithaca,)

4. Week (Oct 16): “I conferred the gift of fire:” [Aeschylus], Prometheus bound

Ø Concepts, topics: ancient and modern notions of the ‘tragic’; (Additional reading: Aristotle, Poetics, “On tragedy.” Further readings: J. W. Goethe, Prometheus.)

5. Week (Oct 23): “Reverence towards the gods must be inviolate:” Sophocles, Antigone.

Ø Concepts, topics: ancient and modern notions of the tragic (cont’d); Hegel (Additional reading: Hegel, “On Tragedy.”)

6. Week (Oct 30): “The presentation of the historical inquiry by Herodotus:” Herodotus, , book 1 Ø Concepts, topics: The beginning of historical inquiry; tragic (?) history (Additional reading: Schiller, Polycrates’ Ring. The English Patient.)

7. Week (Nov 6): “So then he saw some of the men practicing athletic exercises and some combing their long hair: and as he looked upon these things he marveled:” Herodotus, Histories, books 7-9 (sel.) Ø Concepts, topics: The ‘other’ (ethnography, anthropology); the thinking on thoughts (Additional reading: Gilbert Ryle, The Thinking of Thoughts).

8. Week (Nov 13): “War is a most violent master …:” Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (sel. from 1, 2, 3, 6).

Ø Concepts, topics: Political realism, idealism, and the breakdown of civil society (Additional reading: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/united- states-china-war-thucydides-trap/406756/ )

>> THANKS GIVING BREAK <<

9. Week (Nov 27): “But perhaps rhetoric has been getting too roughly handled by us, and she might

1 http://esripm.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/index.html?appid=4fc9153f4d9248b9bab7011e3950b552&webmap=962 ca9da38bf4c5e9439a6acf3dd1b3e 2 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/45392 Great Books, Big Ideas from Antiquity:Greece CLA 56 Tuesdays, 7:00 – 8:50 pm Christopher B. Krebs 10 weeks, Sep 25—Dec 4

answer…:” Plato, Phaedrus Ø Concepts, topics: love (and) words (Additional reading: Hein van Dolen, “Greek Homosexuality.”3)

10. Week (Dec 64: “I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas…” Ø Concepts, topics: Why read the Classics? The Problem of a Canon (Additional Reading: Calvino, “Why Read the Classics?” Hall, “Classics for the People,” Kirsch, “The Five-Foot Shelf Reconsidered.”).

Required texts The Iliad of Homer. Trans. R. Lattimore. Univ. of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226470498 The Odyssey of Homer. Trans. R. Lattimore. Harper Modern Classics. ISBN 860-1404209468 Greek Tragedies I. Ed. M. Griffith and G. W. Most (Third Ed.), ISBN 978-0226035284 The Landmark Herodotus. Ed. R. B. Strassler, ISBN 978-1400031146 The Landmark Thucydides. Ed. R. B. Strassler, ISBN 978-0684827902 Phaedrus (Hackett Classics). Trans. A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff, ISBN 978-0872202207

3 http://www.livius.org/articles/concept/greek-homosexuality/