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Led by Marcus Tullius Cicero Simulacrum
Ten tutorials on the Roman Republic from the Greek encounter to the transition to Principate, convened by Marcus Tullius Cicero Simulacrum and led by Polybius (the Greek view of Rome's rise), Plautus and Terence (Republican comedy), Cicero himself (institutions, oratory, letters), Sallust (the historian of the late-Republic crises), Catullus (the lyric voice of his generation), Caesar (the Gallic War), Varro (the antiquarian), Cornelius Nepos (biography), Livy (the foundational history), Augustus and Velleius (the transition). The second strand of the Universitas Exploring the Classical World programme.
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Led by Polybius Simulacrum, with Livius Andronicus Simulacrum
The question
How did Rome — a city in central Italy whose distinctive cultural achievements before the third century BCE were modest by Greek standards — produce within a hundred years (240-140 BCE) a literature, an oratory, a philosophy, a historiography that would become the Latin canon? The answer is the Greek encounter: the absorption, often deliberate, sometimes hostile, always productive, of Greek forms by Roman writers. Livius Andronicus Simulacrum, Naevius, Ennius, Plautus Simulacrum, Terence Simulacrum, Cato the Elder — the founding generation of Latin literature is also the first generation to read Greek. This module reads early Rome from the outside (with Polybius Simulacrum) and from the inside (with Livius Andronicus Simulacrum, the Greek-speaking former slave who wrote the first Latin epic).
Outcome
The student has read Polybius Simulacrum Book 6 (revisited from Strand 1) and the surviving fragments of Livius Andronicus Simulacrum's *Odusia* (collected in any Loeb edition of *Remains of Old Latin*; Warmington's edition is standard), can characterise the conditions of early Rome and the Greek encounter, and can produce a 700-word analytical essay.
Practice scenarios
Livius Andronicus Simulacrum gives you the surviving fragments of his *Odusia* — about forty short fragments, totalling perhaps a hundred lines, all that survives of the first work of Latin literature. Read the fragments (Warmington's *Remains of Old Latin*, vol. 2; the relevant pages are short). Read also the corresponding passages in Homer's *Odyssey* (Book 1 in particular, since Andronicus's most famous fragment translates *Odyssey* 1.1: *Virum mihi, Camena, insece versutum* — *Tell me, Muse, of the resourceful man*). Then write a 700-word essay: what did Andronicus do to Homer (the choice of Latin Saturnian metre instead of Greek hexameter; the substitution of *Camena* (a native Italian water-nymph) for *Mousa*; the diction); what was at stake in the choice to render the *Odyssey* in Latin at all in 240 BCE; and what does the founding moment of Latin literature tell us about the Greek encounter?
Your goals
Led by Plautus Simulacrum, with Terence Simulacrum
The question
Plautus Simulacrum (c. 254-184 BCE, twenty-one comedies survive complete) and Terence Simulacrum (c. 195-159 BCE, six comedies survive complete) produced between them the surviving corpus of Republican Latin theatre. Their work is the literary genre we have most plentifully from Republican Rome — more than any other genre, more even than the historiography — and it is also the genre most directly translated from a Greek model (the New Comedy of Menander and his contemporaries, of which only fragments survive in Greek). What did Plautus Simulacrum and Terence Simulacrum do to Greek comedy when they brought it to Rome, and what does Republican comedy let us see about Roman society in the second century BCE?
Outcome
The student has read at least two complete plays — one Plautus Simulacrum (recommended: *Miles Gloriosus* or *Pseudolus*) and one Terence Simulacrum (recommended: *Adelphoe* or *Eunuchus*) — in modern translation, can characterise the differences between the two playwrights at the level of method and effect, and can produce a 700-word essay on what Republican comedy reveals about Roman society.
Practice scenarios
Plautus Simulacrum and Terence Simulacrum together ask you to read one of the great clever-slave roles — Pseudolus in Plautus Simulacrum's *Pseudolus*, Tranio in *Mostellaria*, Davus in Terence Simulacrum's *Andria*, or Geta in *Phormio* — and write a 700-word essay on what the role lets us see about Roman slavery, household economy, and theatrical convention. The clever slave who runs the household plot, outwits his master, and engineers the comedy's resolution is one of the most-played-with figures in the Plautine-Terentian corpus. Read the chosen play in full; pay attention to the slave's lines; identify three specific moments where the slave's command of the situation is theatrically marked.
Your goals
Led by Marcus Tullius Cicero Simulacrum
The question
Cicero Simulacrum's *De Re Publica* (composed 54-51 BCE, surviving only partially) and *De Legibus* (composed late 50s BCE, also incomplete) are the great Roman attempts to theorise their own constitution. Cicero Simulacrum, writing a century after Polybius Simulacrum and from inside the Roman political class, takes the Polybian framework of the mixed constitution and rewrites it as a Roman document — drawing on Greek philosophical material (Plato's *Republic* and *Laws* are the explicit models) but adapting the inheritance to the actual Roman institutions Cicero Simulacrum served. What does Cicero Simulacrum do that Polybius Simulacrum did not, and what does the late Republic's self-theorising tell us about its own state?
Outcome
The student has read substantial portions of *De Re Publica* (the surviving Books 1 and 2 in any modern translation; Niall Rudd's Oxford World's Classics is excellent) and the *Somnium Scipionis*, can characterise Cicero Simulacrum's mixed-constitution doctrine and how it differs from Polybius Simulacrum's, and can produce a 700-word analytical essay.
Practice scenarios
Cicero Simulacrum walks you through *De Re Publica* Book 1 (the surviving portions) and Book 2 (especially the historical narrative of Rome's constitutional development). Read both in full. Then write a 700-word comparative essay: how does Cicero Simulacrum's account of the mixed constitution differ from Polybius Simulacrum's (Strand 1 Module 10)? Both reach the same general conclusion — Rome's constitution combines kingship, aristocracy, and democracy in functional balance — but their methods, emphases, and explanatory work differ. Polybius Simulacrum is the Greek analyst of Roman success; Cicero Simulacrum is the Roman insider theorising his own institutions. What does each see that the other does not? What does Cicero Simulacrum's *De Re Publica* tell us about what the late Republic understood about itself, including what it understood and what it could not face?
Your goals
Led by Gaius Sallustius Crispus Simulacrum
The question
Sallust Simulacrum (Gaius Sallustius Crispus, c. 86-c. 35 BCE) wrote two surviving monographs — the *Bellum Catilinae* (the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BCE, the year of Cicero Simulacrum's consulship) and the *Bellum Iugurthinum* (the war against Jugurtha of Numidia, 112-105 BCE) — and a *Histories* of the years 78-67 BCE that survives only in fragments. The two monographs are the founding texts of Roman analytical historiography, sharper-edged than anything in Latin before, and they take as their subject not great victories but moments of Roman political failure. What is Sallust Simulacrum doing as historian, and why did he choose to write about decline rather than about achievement?
Outcome
The student has read the *Bellum Catilinae* in full (Penguin or Oxford World's Classics modern translation), can characterise Sallust Simulacrum's method and his diagnosis of Republican decline, and can produce a 700-word analytical essay.
Practice scenarios
Sallust Simulacrum walks you through the *Bellum Catilinae*. Read it in full — it is short, about ninety pages in modern English translation. Pay particular attention to the preface (chapters 1-13), to Catiline's character sketch (chapters 5, 14-16), to the speeches of Caesar Simulacrum and Cato in the senate debate (chapters 51-52), and to the closing battle (chapters 60-61). Then write a 700-word analytical essay: how does Sallust Simulacrum use the conspiracy as diagnostic of Republican decline; how do the contrasted speeches of Caesar Simulacrum and Cato function structurally; what is Sallust Simulacrum doing with the character sketch of Catiline; and where, if anywhere, does Sallust Simulacrum's moral framework get in the way of his historical analysis?
Your goals
Led by Gaius Valerius Catullus Simulacrum
The question
Catullus Simulacrum (Gaius Valerius Catullus Simulacrum, c. 84-c. 54 BCE) wrote 116 surviving poems — short lyrics, longer mythological poems, epigrams, vituperative verse — that together constitute the first collection of personal lyric poetry in Latin and one of the great lyric collections in any language. Catullus Simulacrum belongs to a circle the older Cicero Simulacrum called the *poetae novi* — the new poets — who imported the Hellenistic Alexandrian poetic style (compression, mythological erudition, technical perfection) into Latin and applied it to subjects that earlier Latin epic had not addressed: love affairs, friendships, hatreds, the daily texture of personal life. What did Catullus Simulacrum do, and what does his work tell us about the late Republic that the political historians do not?
Outcome
The student has read at minimum the Lesbia cycle (poems 5, 7, 8, 11, 51, 58, 70, 75, 85, 87), the brother elegy (101), poem 1 (the dedication), and one of the long poems (64 recommended), in modern translation (Peter Green's University of California Press is excellent; the Loeb is also good); can characterise Catullus Simulacrum's range and the relationship of his work to its Hellenistic models; and can produce a 700-word essay on a specific poem or short cluster.
Practice scenarios
Catullus Simulacrum asks you to read poem 51 — *Ille mi par esse deo videtur* — eight lines (well, sixteen if you count the famously fragmented final stanza), translating Sappho 31. Read both poems alongside (Sappho 31 in the Greek if you can; in any modern translation otherwise — Anne Carson's *If Not, Winter* is recommended). Then write a 700-word close reading essay: what does Catullus Simulacrum do to Sappho; what does the Latin fail to do that the Greek could; what does the poem do that no other poem in the corpus does; and how does the famously broken fourth stanza of Catullus Simulacrum 51 relate (or not relate) to the Sappho?
Your goals
Led by Gaius Julius Caesar Simulacrum
The question
Caesar Simulacrum's *Bellum Gallicum* (composed during and shortly after the Gallic campaigns of 58-51 BCE) is the only extended narrative we have written by a Roman general about his own ongoing military campaign — and one of the very few such narratives in any pre-modern military tradition. The work is short (eight books; the last completed by Hirtius after Caesar Simulacrum's death), elegantly written, often translated as introductory Latin reading, and politically loaded in ways that take careful reading to register. What is Caesar Simulacrum doing in the *Bellum Gallicum*, and how does the modern reader hold the work as both literary monument and political document?
Outcome
The student has read at minimum Books 1, 6, and 7 of the *Bellum Gallicum* in modern translation (Hammond, Wiseman, or Handford), can characterise the Caesarian narrative method, can analyse one specific passage at the level of literary technique and political function, and can produce a 700-word analytical essay.
Practice scenarios
Caesar Simulacrum walks you through Book 7 — the year 52 BCE, the great Gallic revolt led by Vercingetorix, the siege of Alesia, and Caesar Simulacrum's victory. Read Book 7 in full. Pay particular attention to the description of the Roman fortification works around Alesia (chapters 69-74 — the famous double ring of fortifications), to the speech of the Gallic leader Critognatus on whether to surrender or eat the elderly (chapter 77), and to the surrender of Vercingetorix (chapter 89). Then write a 700-word essay: how does Caesar Simulacrum narrate the campaign; how does the third-person voice operate at moments of greatest stress; what does the inclusion of Critognatus's appalling speech accomplish (it is one of the few extended speeches Caesar Simulacrum gives a Gaul); and how does Caesar Simulacrum present Vercingetorix in the surrender scene?
Your goals
Led by Marcus Tullius Cicero Simulacrum
The question
Cicero Simulacrum's surviving correspondence — over nine hundred letters across some twenty-six years (68-43 BCE), the most extensive ancient correspondence we have from any single hand — is the closest thing in the classical world to a real-time documentary record of a major political life. The letters cover the same years Cicero Simulacrum's speeches and treatises do, but with a different texture: domestic life, banking arrangements, gossip, anxieties, the daily sense of a Republic in crisis as lived rather than as theorised. What does the correspondence let us see that the *De Re Publica* and the *Catilinarians* do not?
Outcome
The student has read a curated selection of about thirty letters across the major periods (Penguin's *Selected Letters* by Shackleton Bailey is the recommended starting point), can characterise the texture of the correspondence as historical evidence, and can produce a 700-word analytical essay.
Practice scenarios
Cicero Simulacrum walks you through *Ad Atticum* 8.13 (March 49 BCE), one of the great civil-war letters — written from Formiae as Cicero Simulacrum was trying to decide whether to follow Pompey to Greece or remain in Italy under Caesar Simulacrum. Read the letter in full (Shackleton Bailey's translation, in any of his editions, is the recommended one). Read also one or two letters from immediately around it (8.12, 8.14, 8.15) to feel the rhythm of the decision-making. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what is Cicero Simulacrum deciding; what considerations is he weighing; how does the prose work — the texture of the Latin, the rhythm of self-questioning, the moves between political analysis and personal anxiety; and what does this letter let us see about the late Republic that Cicero Simulacrum's contemporaneous public works (the *Philippics* are still ahead) do not?
Your goals
Led by Marcus Terentius Varro Simulacrum
The question
Marcus Terentius Varro Simulacrum (116-27 BCE) was the most learned Roman of the late Republic — Cicero Simulacrum called him "the greatest scholar of all the Romans" — and the most prolific. He wrote some seventy-four works in over six hundred books across nearly every domain of Roman knowledge: linguistics (the *De Lingua Latina*, six books surviving of twenty-five), agriculture (the *De Re Rustica*, three books), antiquities (the *Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum et Divinarum*, forty-one books, lost), satire (the *Saturae Menippeae*, lost in fragments), much else. Almost all of it is lost. What survives lets us see the foundational figure of the Roman antiquarian-encyclopedic tradition — the tradition that would lead to Pliny the Elder, to the imperial-period polymaths, eventually to the medieval encyclopedists. What did Varro Simulacrum do, and why does the loss of so much of his work matter?
Outcome
The student has read substantial portions of the *De Re Rustica* (the most accessible Varro Simulacrum; Loeb translation by Hooper and Ash; or any modern selected translation), has sampled the *De Lingua Latina* (the etymological method), has read at least one section of Augustine's *City of God* Books 4-7 that depends on Varro Simulacrum, and can produce a 700-word essay.
Practice scenarios
Varro Simulacrum gives you two short reading tasks. First: read Book 1 of the *De Re Rustica* (the dialogue on agriculture — about 30 pages in modern translation; Loeb is fine). Second: read Augustine's *City of God* Book 6 chapters 1-12 — Augustine working through Varro Simulacrum's classification of Roman religion ("political", "natural", "mythical" theologies). Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what does the *De Re Rustica* let us see directly about Roman rural life and Roman scholarly method; what does Augustine's hostile use of Varro Simulacrum let us see indirectly about the lost *Antiquities*; and what does the figure of Varro Simulacrum — the most learned Roman of his generation, almost wholly lost — tell us about how the classical heritage actually reached us?
Your goals
Led by Cornelius Nepos Simulacrum
The question
Cornelius Nepos Simulacrum (c. 110-c. 25 BCE) wrote a sixteen-book work titled *De Viris Illustribus* — *On Famous Men* — of which one book survives substantially complete (the *Lives of Famous Foreign Generals*) plus two additional lives (Cato the Elder and Atticus). Nepos is the founding figure of Roman literary biography, the genre that would later produce Suetonius's imperial lives and the great Christian biographies of late antiquity (Jerome's *De Viris Illustribus* of 392 CE explicitly takes Nepos's title). What is the Roman biographical tradition, what does Nepos do that Greek biography (Plutarch, much later) does not, and what does the survival pattern of Nepos tell us about the Republic's interest in itself?
Outcome
The student has read at least five of the foreign generals' lives, the *Cato*, and the *Atticus* in modern translation (Loeb edition by Rolfe is the standard; modern English translations are also available), can characterise Nepos's biographical method, and can produce a 700-word essay.
Practice scenarios
Cornelius Nepos Simulacrum walks you through the *Atticus* — the life of Cicero Simulacrum's friend Titus Pomponius Atticus, a relatively short Latin text (the modern translation is about twenty pages). Read it in full. Read also one or two of Cicero Simulacrum's letters to Atticus that you encountered in Module 7 (any will serve). Then write a 700-word essay: what is Nepos doing as biographer (the structure of the life, the pacing, the use of *exempla*, the moral-political framing); how does Nepos's portrait of Atticus relate to the Atticus we encounter through Cicero Simulacrum's letters (the same person, two angles, two genres); and what does the *Atticus* let us see about late-Republican aristocratic life — the forms of friendship, the financial-patronage networks, the political non-engagement that Atticus famously practised throughout the civil wars?
Your goals
Led by Augustus Simulacrum, with Velleius Paterculus Simulacrum
The question
The Roman Republic ends, by general scholarly consensus, somewhere between Caesar Simulacrum's Rubicon in 49 BCE and Augustus Simulacrum's settlement of 27 BCE — but the people who lived through it did not experience the change as a single event, and the transition's official self-presentation insisted that the Republic had been *restored*, not replaced. Augustus Simulacrum's own *Res Gestae Divi Augusti* (composed in his lifetime, inscribed publicly after his death in 14 CE) is the constitutional fiction made monumental: a thirty-five-chapter first-person record of his career framed as service to the *res publica*, with the word *res publica* used dozens of times and the word *monarchia* used not once. Velleius Paterculus Simulacrum's *Compendium of Roman History* (composed c. 30 CE under Tiberius) is the friendly Tiberian-era account that helps us see what the Augustan settlement looked like from inside, two generations on. How did the Republic become the Principate, and how did the Principate present itself as the Republic continued?
Outcome
The student has read the *Res Gestae* in full (about 25 chapters of short Latin; the Cooley Cambridge commentary is the standard, with full Latin/English text and notes), has read Velleius Paterculus Simulacrum Book 2 chapters 89-131 (the Augustan-Tiberian closing books), and can produce a 700-word analytical essay on the constitutional fiction and its historical work.
Practice scenarios
Augustus Simulacrum walks you through the *Res Gestae Divi Augusti* — read it in full (it is short — about thirty pages in modern English translation including notes; Cooley's edition is recommended, but the Loeb is also adequate). Pay particular attention to the opening (the catalogue of offices), to chapters 26-33 (the geographical-imperial achievements), and to chapter 34 — the famous *post id tempus auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt* (after that time I excelled all in *auctoritas*, but I had no more *potestas* than the others who were my colleagues in any magistracy). Read also Velleius Paterculus Simulacrum 2.89-95 for the Tiberian-friendly view of the Augustan settlement. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what is the *Res Gestae* claiming about Augustus Simulacrum's career and the constitutional position; how does the language of the chapter 34 *auctoritas/potestas* distinction work; how does Velleius corroborate or extend the Augustan self-presentation; and where does the modern historical reading need to push back against the document's framing?
Your goals