Roman Tragedy

Catalog description

Tragedy is often thought of as the quintessentially Greek genre. And yet we have evidence that the Romans were eager to adopt tragedy for their own as soon as they started writing Latin literature. These dramas are not simply a matter of translating a sad and scary Greek myth into Latin. Instead, Roman tragedies are a hybrid cultural production, reinvigorating an already ancient story and raising its stakes in the new, Roman imperial context. In this course, we’ll read one of the nine extant tragedies of Seneca in Latin, with appropriate support from undergraduate and scholarly commentaries. Students will have the opportunity to develop research skills with specialized tools as well as to develop their own individual interpretations of ancient evidence.