ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION

Oedipus and the Sphinx
CLASSICS 121: BOOKS & READING SCHEDULE FOR THE COURSE

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PAPERS

Here are the Required Texts and the Reading Schedule for Classics 121.

REQUIRED

Richard Buxton The Complete World of Greek Mythology Thames & Hudson CW
Robert Graves Greek Myths 2 vols (or 2 vols. in one). Penguin GM
M. Hadas Ten Plays by Euripides Bantam
Peter Levi (trans.) Pausanias: Guide to Greece 2 vols. Penguin
P.MacKendrick The Greek Stones Speak Norton GS
M.P.Nilsson Greek Folk Religion Philadelphia
John Pedley  Sanctuaries & the Sacred in the Ancient Greek World   Cambridge P
D.G.Rice & J.E.Stambaugh Sources for the Study of Greek Religion Scholars Press S
L.B.Zaidman & P.S.Pantel   Religion in the Ancient Greek City     Cambridge            R

RECOMMENDED

Peter Levi Atlas of the Greek World Facts on File
Georg Luck Arcana Mundi Johns Hopkins
M.P.O.Morford & R.J.Lenardon Classical Mythology (8th edition) Oxford CM
W.F.Otto The Homeric Gods Ayer HG

Note 1: if you have translations by other translators of any of the above works which you favor, it is fine to go ahead and use them. Just remember that page references used in handouts, class and section, and passages cited in exams, will be as in the versions above.

Note 2: Robert Graves Greek Myths is available in two formats, a two-volume set (regular Penguin paperback size, with each volume clearly titled 1 or 2) and a single volume (larger size and thicker). The contents of the two formats are identical. I have ordered the single-volume for this course, since I find it more convenient to use, but bookstores often get confused and order just one volume of the two-volume set, so make sure you have the full Graves!

Note 3: Morford and Lenardon's Classical Mythology has been revised regularly and each edition differs from the previous one (slightly different Greek and Latin texts cited and excerpted, and different page numbers). It is best to use one of the latest editions, which are much fuller than earlier editions: the eighth edition has just come out (summer 2006), but references in this Schedule are to the 7th edition, which is currently more easily available and which has not really been outdated. (If you do use the 8th edition, note that the page numbers are different, of course.)

READING SCHEDULE

The following is a schedule of the ‘core’ texts we expect everyone to become familiar with week by week. We expect to be able to count on your having read these texts by the beginning of the week for which they are listed.

Please note that you will be doing other reading in addition to these texts:

(1) We expect you to be doing your own ‘follow-up’ research for each text, looking up context, ancillary material, background, names, terms etc., using Graves, MacKendrick, online material via GreekReligion.org and so on.

(2) as you develop your own interests (and especially in connection with the paper) you will probably want to look at other texts you come across, or that we recommend to you individually. E.g. if you work on the Furies you will want to read Aeschylus’ Eumenides or Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus; if you work on games festivals you may find yourself reading some Pindar - and so on.

(3) in your weekly section your TA may sometimes assign texts of major importance not on this list.

(4) I will be handing out bi-weekly ‘aphormai’, itemisations of names, terms etc. encountered in class, keyed to essential material for you to study in the main reference work.

Note: you will get plenty of opportunity to utilise the material you cover not listed directly below. Both mid-term and final exams will have plenty of choice and will not be limited to what is listed here.

I strongly urge you to do as much reading over the weekend as you can to prepare for the upcoming week.

Note: these texts are keyed in part to the material we will cover in lecture week by week, but in addition this schedule spreads the workload fairly evenly through the semester. The course and the reading are designed to be cumulative: class presentation will assume that you are reading and studying these texts carefully on a continuous basis, and both building and rebuilding familiarity with them. You should expect to visit and then revisit. This approach is essential to our overall project, to construct a true understanding of how Greek Religion works.

[Note 1: in the schedule that follows, books are referred to by the abbreviations annotated to the right of each title in the list above. I have added suggested reading from the Recommended texts for those of you that want to include those books.]

Week 1: Euripides Trojan Women; CW 130-145, 200-205; [CM 436-481]

Week 2: P 1-28; S 1-25; CW 1-41, 42-53; [Atlas 1-60; CM 3-50]

Week 3: R ch. 1-3; P 119-134; CW 66-87, 94-101, 146-153; Nilsson Ch. 1; [CM 51-107]

Week 4: P 154-166; Nilsson Ch. 2, 4; S 25-30; [CM 108-146]

Week 5: CW 102-129; P 29-77; R ch. 4-6, 12; [Atlas 62-110]

Week 6: P 78-118; R ch. 8-10; Euripides Ion; S 139-146, 205; [CM 257-273]

Week 7: P 186-204; R ch. 14; S 126-7; Euripides Iphigeneia at Aulis; [CM 147-170, 548-572; Atlas 112-158]

Week 8: [mid-term] Nilsson Ch.5, 6; S 117-121, 150-151

Week 9: CW 54-65; S 51-68; R appendix 1, appendix 2;  [CM 307-327]

Week 10: R ch. 7; S 147-159; Euripides Hippolytus; [CM 200-225]

Week 11: CW 170-199, 206-213; [CM 171-199]

Week 12: P 135-153; R ch. 11; Nilsson Ch. 3, 7; S 69-80, 93-8, 123-137, 170-193; [CM 226-256]

Week 13: R ch. 13; S 195-255; Euripides Bacchae; [CM 274-300, 328-353]

Week 14: P 205-240; S 31-50, 87-91

Week 15:

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