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Greek and Roman Religions, Fall 1999 

Syllabus
RELS 110-601
CLST 110-601
Carl Seaquist
A.  About the Course

This course surveys the history of religion in the Greek and Roman worlds from the Bronze Age until  the advent of Christianity.  We will examine the range of religious expression in the ancient world, including ritual, priestly  organization, the problem of belief, views of the divine, myth, iconography and religious architecture.  We also will consider Greek and Roman religious culture in the context of contemporary societies in  India, Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China, and look at evolution over time. 

In addition, the course is focused around a central theme:  the relationship between religion and literature.  As we will begin discussing early in the term, the primary form of religion in the ancient world was cultic,  the religious rituals of individual city-states and regions in Greece and Italy.  But our evidence for cultic religion is limited and partial.  Our best evidence is literary, because literary texts from antiquity were widely copied during the Middle Ages and hence survived into the modern period in large numbers.  Since clearly the religions of cult and of literature differ in significant ways,  one of the main problems for any student of classical religions is to decide how to reconcile these disparate types of evidence and types of religion to form a unified picture. 

For some further thoughts on how this course works, click here

The instructor for this course is Carl Seaquist.  Contact information is as follows: 
 

email carlas@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
home phone (215) 474-2977
office
office phone
office hours not yet set
 
B.  Textbooks

 The following required books can be found at the Penn Bookstore (36th and Walnut Streets): 

  • Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, Harvard UP 1985.
  • Paul Veyne, Did the Greek Believe in Their Myths?, U of Chicago Press 1988.
  • Denis Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome:  Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs, Cambridge UP 1998.
  • Miller, Andrew, ed., Greek Lyric, Hackett 1996.
  • Ovid, Fasti:  Roman Holidays, Betty Nagle, trans. and ed., Indiana UP 1995.
The Burkert is the  textbook for the Greek half of the course.  Book reviews will be written on the Veyne and Feeney books; all three of these books are recent, secondary sources.  The Miller edition and the Ovid provide you with some primary sources.  Other primary sources will be available online. 

The following was going to serve as our textbook for Roman religion, until I was informed that it was out of print.  It seems the bookstore did manage to locate about 10 copies, so this will be a required book if you can easily get a copy, and an optional one if you can't.  People who can't get a copy will have alternative assignments for a couple of weeks.  This system actually works out rather well, since it will let us cover more material without doing more homework. Officially, this book is optional for everyone.

  • Beard, Mary, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, vol. 1 only (History), Cambridge UP 1998
In addition, the following book is purely optional.   It is a collection of primary sources; you might find it useful in writing your Final Paper, especially if you also have the first volume, since the two volumes are cross-referenced to each other.  You can also find sources for your Final Paper in the library, if you would prefer: 
  • Beard, Mary, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, vol. 2 (Sourcebook), Cambridge UP 1998 
 
C.  Course Schedule

This is available on a separate web page, which can be accessed at GRRsch.htm
 

D.  Grading

Grades for this course will be based on two book reviews and a final paper.  Details about these follow.  Briefly, the book reviews will be written on the Veyne and Feeney volumes, and are intended as critical reviews.  The final paper will address the relationship between religion and literature in Greece and Rome, referring to assigned secondary source readings, other secondary source readings if you like, and a selction of primary sources of your choosing.  The final paper will account for roughly half the course grade, with the other half coming equally from the two book reviews. 

Class attendance is not a formal part of the course grade, but all students are advised that regular class attendance is, as a practical matter, necessary in order to do well on the written assignments that are graded.  Not only will you learn things in lecture that are necessary background, but you will learn what I think about the subject matter and what I expect on the reviews and paper.  My attitude is that I should earn your attendance by making classes interesting and useful. 

I am also open to allowing students to pursue research projects on subjects covered at some point in this course, even if they do not relate to the religion-and-literature theme that structures the course.  In all likelihood, only majors in Classics or, perhaps, Religious Studies will have the background and skills in an introductory class to pursue serious independent research, so I will not advise anyone to write a research paper.  However, it is useful, for example in applying to graduate schools, to have a file of research papers ready at hand, and I will certainly help any students who feels the desire to take this harder means of satisfying the course requirements.  If you want to write a research paper, please speak to me early in the term.  Grades for such students will be based entirely on the one term paper, though I will also expect you to give an oral presentation of your research to the class in one of the weeks after Thanksgiving. 
 

E.  Class Organization

This class will be run in a seminar format.  I will prepare some formal lectures for every class, because my experience teaching this course shows me that most students appreciate some lecturing.  But I would rather have active class discussion than formal lecture, and I will run the class in ways that encourage discussion.  Thus, I will designate one or two students for every class session (what I call "session leaders"), who will plan to be especially well prepared for class that day.  This means you will be asked to make a short (5 minutes, perhaps) presentation (maybe an answer to a pre-determined question) early in the class, and you will be prepared to help keep discussion going.  Since leading sessions is not a formal part of the grade in class, this is not strictly required.  And students who are highly uncomfortable with public speaking can opt out of leading sessions entirely.  But I expect everyone to volunteer since this will help the course  maintain a seminar flavor and should make it a better academic experience for everyone.  The more you participate, the less I will have to lecture at you. 
 

F.  Book Reviews

These are critical reviews, not just plot summaries.  They should have two major components:  a summary of the book's main thesis, including a discussion of the author's use of sources and his argument; and your educated reaction to this thesis.  These do not need to be formally separated into distinct sections of the paper, though this might be the easiest format to follow.  In fact,  how you structure the paper is up to you, as long as you follow a style appropriate to scholarship in the humanities.  If you have any questions about format or style, feel free to ask me. 

Your summary of the book is not a trivial part of this review:  it forces you to select some topics and omit others, and to create the object that you will react to in the rest of the paper.   There are a number of possible, good readings of each book, but there are more bad readings than good ones.  So you have a lot of freedom in this assignment, but the book you review will be a objective check to your summary.  Your reaction to the book's thesis may make arguments not found in the book and may refer to evidence that the book does not mention, but it should be a reaction to the thesis of the book, as you understand it.  If you assume a five page review, perhaps two pages should be devoted to your summary, and three to your reaction.  But these are only very approximate guidelines. 

Think of the audience for these reviews as the average Penn student, or your parents, or the average intelligent, college-educated person in the business world.  In other words, you can't assume knowledge of what has happened in our class, and you can't expect much knowledge of the ancient world beyond what is found in standard European history courses. 

We will discuss these books in class to some extent, but one reason I am asking you to write reviews of these books is because there is not much time in the schedule to talk about them in class.  Probably we will discuss Feeney's book in more detail than Veyne's, since it is more central to the main theme of the course. 
 

F.  Final Paper

This is in many ways the culmination of the course.  It will seek to address the following question: 
 
Did Greek and Roman religions become transmuted by their incorporation into literature, or should we think of religion and literature as two distinct cultural practices that helped define each other over the course of the centuries? 
You probably don't want to put your paper in the form of an answer, of course.  You should state a thesis somewhere early in the paper, and the form your thesis takes will dictate the structure of your paper (so you probably want to write your thesis after you know how your paper will go).   But this question should serve to guide you. 

Notice that this question is formulated in the language that Feeney uses in his book:  this paper is the natural extenstion of the work you did in your two book reviews.  (In fact, Feeney relies heavily on Veyne's book, so the second book review is in the same way an extension of the first review.) 

The week before Thanksgiving, I am asking you to give me a summary, or outline, and/or working bibliography of your final paper.  This gives me an idea where you are in working on your paper, and will allow me to plan our last two classes to maximize the benefit to you.  You won't be graded on this summary per se, but the more effort you put into it, the better off you will be when the time comes to write your final paper. 

For a fuller explanation of what is expected for the final paper, click here
 

 last updated:  August 24, 1999