Program Overview

---

Our Latin Set Book short course offers you the unique opportunity to study a Classical Latin text in depth with the guidance of specialist tutors who are active in research in that area. You will learn to translate complex Latin with confidence and attention to linguistic nuance. You will also be encouraged to relate your reading to understanding broader questions about ancient culture, society and thought. The texts we study each year change in response to student needs and preferences.

This course focuses on the Younger Seneca's two treatises

De otio

,

De brevitate vitae,

which explore ideas central to Roman Stoic philosophy and indeed to Roman imperial culture.

De otio

offers Seneca’s perspective on the long-standing debate as to the relative merits of the life of political participation on the one hand and the life of philosophical contemplation on the other. Seneca grapples with the tensions between being a citizen of a particular state and aspiring to membership of the Stoic cosmopolis, a community which transcends political particularity.

De brevitate vitae

offers strategies for coming to terms with the finite nature of human existence. Time is a key preoccupation, as Seneca criticises (with satirical verve) the multiplicity of ways in which people waste their lives.

Using Gareth Williams’ Cambridge University Press edition of these two texts (2003), we shall savour the vivid and distinctive texture of Seneca’s prose and the range of literary techniques he deploys to win over his readers.

Teaching on this course is varied and interactive. It includes in-class translation and discussion of language, context and interpretation.

By the end of the Latin Set Book course you will be able to:

read complex Classical Latin texts in the original with confidence

analyse the wider implications of your reading for the study of Classical literature, ancient history and ancient philosophy

understand how the set text has been transmitted within the modern world and make use of the

apparatus criticus

to further your understanding

enrich your knowledge of the ancient world through close engagement with original evidence.

The course will be taught jointly by

Professor Catharine Edwards

and

Dr Benjamin Gray

.

Please note: each weekly session will be two hours in length and run from 6pm to 8pm.

This course is non-credit bearing, so carries no credit points.