Description and Objectives

Often called the “Prince of Biographers,” Plutarch did not invent the genre but for many, he brought it to a perfection that has rarely been surpassed since. This course will examine Plutarch’s approach to biography and compare it with the historian’s approach. Using the Life of Themistocles, we will see just what the art of biography offers us and how the genre differs from history as Herodotus and Thucydides invented it.

Textbooks

We’ll be reading Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles, and selections from Herodotus and Thucydides.

Course Requirements

We will have a weekly vocabulary test based first on the most common Greek words and then on the most common words in Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles.

We will also have a weekly quiz on the translation work we’ve done so far.

When an English reading is given, a quiz should be assumed for the following school day unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Successful Students

Succesful Students will:

• Review daily the material we covered in class
• Consciously shore up their vocabulary, morphology, and syntax weaknesses
• Come prepared with intelligent questions about the grammar, but also the substance and genre of the works we are translating.