Description and Objectives

This course will include a reading and translation of Seneca’s Phaedra, a stirring Latin/Roman tragedy based upon Euripides’s Greek tragedy, Hippolytus. Students will directly translate a majority of the play’s 1280 lines from the Latin, while also reading English versions of the lines not translated and an English translation of Hippolytus, giving the class a wonderful opportunity to discern and discuss how Seneca’s treatment of the tragic story at issue reveals his distinctly Roman approach and attitudes as well as his well-established adherence to Stoicism.

Textbooks

The “textbook” for this class will be The Phaedra of Seneca, edited, commented upon and glossed by Gilbert and Sarah Lawall and Gerda Kunkel.

Course Requirements

To read and translate selections from Seneca’s Phaedra and to read translated portions of both Phaedra and Hippolytus (its Greek precursor by Euripides).

Course Expectations

• The students will be expected to prepare for in-class review of their nightly translation of 10-30 lines of Seneca’s dramatic writing.

Goals for Student Learning

• The students will sharpen their skill in thinking and communicating. This skill will be acquired, as it usually is, by reading some of the sharpest thinkers and communicators the world has ever known.
• The students will attain such mastery of the grammar and syntax of the language, the most important tools, e.g., lexica, reference grammars and commentaries, and the most frequently encountered vocabulary, that they will be able to read classical Latin texts as literature.

Successful Students

The students successful in this course will: 

• study Latin at least fifteen minutes every day of the week, and will
• seek extra help at the first signs of difficulty, not only from the instructor, who is available before/after school and by appointment during Mass Study Hall, but also from classmates.