Latin Literature of the 1st Century BC

This paper includes set texts and involves compulsory translation and comment on those texts, but candidates are also expected to have some knowledge of the period more generally. There will be one three-hour paper asking for essays and commentaries, and one one-and-a-half hour paper of translation. The translations and passages for commentary will be chosen from the texts listed.

In answering questions specifically concerned with the prescribed books, candidates should obviously deal primarily with these, but should also feel free to include relevant points arising from their reading of other texts, both on the syllabus and off it. Where the question is more general, relating to the period as a whole, they should feel free to refer to any authors and texts they think relevant.

Translation and comment each account for 25% of the mark on this option, and the two essays for the remainder. (Hence c. 1 hr. should normally be spent on each of the essays, not c. 45 minutes, as for the essays in most of the other literary options.). Since a candidate may (but need not) answer an essay on a specific set text, the minimum amount which must focus on more general questions is one essay, 25% of the mark. Even here, set texts will certainly be relevant, but examiners will welcome some attempt to look beyond these.

Latin Literature of the First Century B.C. is the study of a period of literature, and questions may span two or more of the prescribed books, or may be addressed to the period more generally. In lectures the subject will be studied through interesting and important topics. The kind of topics regarded as important in the lecture courses are: the influence of preceding Greek literature, the place of women in society and texts, questions of politics, patronage and power, and the relation between Latin literature and philosophy and religion. The ‘book’ both as a technological and artistic fact is an important area of interest in the period. These key authors also of course provoke study of more purely literary matters: questions of style, imagery, symbolism, allegory, convention, originality and so on.

Teaching: lectures, and tutorials and classes.