CLSS 330 Virgilian Myth and Roman Culture

This course explores the Aeneid, an Odyssey and Iliad combined, to explain how it provides a mythic metahistory of the creation of ancient Roman-Italian identity. Virgil's epic symbolically reflects and defines how that identity was shaped through contacts with other cultures-notable those of Etruria, Greece, Carthage, and the Hellenized Middle East-and further reflects and defines how Augustus consolidated an ideologically and politically unified Italian state. Other readings help to illuminate the cultural context. [GM2, H]

Prerequisite

Any CLSS, Latin, Greek, or History course or permission of instructor

Instructor

Rosa