Reed College
Reed College

Humanities 110

Introduction to the Humanities

Paper Topics | Spring 2016 | Paper 3

Due Saturday, April 16th, by 5 p.m., in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox.
Length: consult your conference leader

Choose one of the following questions:

  1. Ovid concludes what's been called his "epic of transformation" with a poetic apotheosis of Julius Caesar (XV.745-850), a prediction of the apotheosis of Augustus, and a prophecy of his own apotheosis in the epilogue (XV.871-9). What does this sequence imply about the practice of political deification? How does Suetonius (writing a century later) handle the problem of the deification of Augustus?

  2. The Aeneid is a story fated to end in the founding of a city, yet it proceeds through a series of delays. The Ara Pacis is a monument to Augustus' victories, yet contains a mass of detail not all obviously related to the promotion of Augustus. Do these works encourage us to linger over them, or do they push us to their final goals? Use formal details to argue for how one or both of these two works are paced, and why.

  3. What is the relation between the practice of philosophy and the life of politics? In The Handbook, Epictetus warns that if we pursue wealth and and public office we will "certainly fail" to achieve freedom and happiness (11), telling his reader instead to be "content therefore in everything to be a philosopher. . ." (17). Seneca, in On Tranquility, prescribes precisely what Epictetus forbids, a life of political service, as therapy to his unsteady patient Serenus. Explain and adjudicate. You might consider one (or more) of the following questions. What is philosophy, according to Epictetus, and why is it incompatible with politics? What is the Stoic rationale for holding public office, according to Seneca? Is one of these two positions more coherent or compelling than the other? Could the tension between these views somehow be resolved?

  4. Women in ancient Rome were expected to practice the arts of spinning and weaving (consider, for example, how Suetonius describes Augustus as wearing "house clothes woven and sewn for him" by his wife and daughters and granddaughters). Both Lucretia (in Livy) and Arachne (in Ovid) are described as practicing these arts, yet both are (in different ways) also subversive storytellers: Lucretia makes herself into an exemplum while Arachne produces a "hectic anthology of divine debauchery." What are the connections between the gendered roles of spinning and weaving and the activity of storytelling?

  5. Write your own essay topic. If you choose this option, it is necessary to have your conference leader approve your topic before you start working on it.