Paper Topics | Spring 2011 | Paper 2
Due Saturday, April 2nd, 5 p.m., in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox.
Suggested Length 1500-1800 words
Write an essay in response to one of the following prompts. Structure your essay around a strong, analytical claim, and provide specific, detailed evidence from the texts to support that claim.
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Providing a detailed visual analysis, discuss the extent to which one of the following sculptures at Pergamon captures what Andrew Stewart ("Looking Forward: After Alexander," 205-206) describes as the Hellenistic tension between the private and the universal: the Telephos frieze, the Gigantomachy frieze, or the Dying Celtic Trumpeter. You might fruitfully compare the visual program of your chosen work with the Parthenon friezes from last semester. An image gallery of the works in question can be accessed at http://cdm-workspace.reed.edu/gallery/1815.
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Cicero's Second Philippic is, as our edition indicates, "an attack on an enemy of freedom." What account of political freedom underlies the attack? What vision of the good citizen is implied by this account? You may especially wish to compare the good citizen to the good leader or to consider what counts as civic virtue within Ciceros conception of freedom.
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Ambition (or love of glory) figures as a central concern in Polybius', Cicero's and Sallusts accounts of good government. Compare two of these writers' arguments on why and how their preferred form of government deals with the challenge of personal and/or political ambition.
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In Book 5 of On the Nature of Things, Lucretius appears to make the argument for a life of quietism and moderation (see esp. lines 1117-1135). In what ways does this position depend upon the atomistic account of the physical universe that he articulates in Books 1-3?
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Based on your reading of Genesis and Exodus, either make the case for why 1 Maccabees should be included in the canonical Hebrew Bible, or make the case for why Daniel should not be included. How does your chosen text both alter and contribute to the worldview of the patriarchs and Moses?
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Discuss the representation and use of urban space in Plautus The Swaggering Soldier (Miles Gloriosus), paying close attention to the people who inhabit it and the types of ways that the characters interact with their surroundings. To what extent would you agree that the play gives voice to a Roman rethinking of - or misunderstanding of - the Hellenistic City? (You may perhaps wish to make reference to the urban spaces we see in Theocritus "Idyll 15" or in Aristophanes The Frogs, or in the reserve readings on Alexandria by Empereur and Venit.)
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What specific qualities characterize Theocritus as a lyric poet? What constitutes a poetic voice in his work? In answering these questions, you may wish to reflect on his relationship to previous poetic traditions (particularly archaic Greek lyrics), and how he both follows and revises them. Your essay should include a close reading of no more than two of his Idylls.
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The Hellenistic and Roman worlds lacked many of the elements that had brought coherence to the Classical polis, such as limited size, ethnic homogeneity, shared values concerning virtue, the body, and citizenship. What models of adjusting to the new political realities do two of the following texts offer: Plautus' The Swaggering Soldier (Miles Gloriosus), Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, the Book of Daniel, Sallust's Catilines War?
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As Sallust introduces his topic and constructs his authority as a historiographer in Catilines War (pp. 3-6), he provides both a portrait of human nature and social dynamics, as well as a narrative of a fall from simpler and more virtuous times. How are such frameworks consistent with the content and purposes of Catilines War as a whole? Analyze an incident or series of incidents in the text that either demonstrates or contradicts Sallusts historical premises.
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In consultation with your conference leader, devise your own paper topic.