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Semester 2
Lucretius, 'De rerum natura' (LATI10022)
Subject
Latin
College
CAHSS
Credits
20
Normal Year Taken
3
Delivery Session Year
2023/2024
Pre-requisites
Visiting students must have completed 3 courses in Classics (at least 2 of which must be in Latin) at grade B or above for entry to this course. We will only consider University/College level courses. **Please see Additional Restrictions below**
Course Summary
This course is devoted to Lucretius' didactic poem De rerum natura. The text will be read partly in Latin and partly in English translation.
Course Description
We will work our way through most of the 6 book poem over the term. The text will be read partly in Latin and partly in English translation. The lecture topics given below are meant as an illustration, but may vary from year to year. Week 1: Introduction: Didactic poetry: Hesiod, Empedocles and Cicero's Aratea; Week 2: Introduction to Epicurus: Epicurean epistemology; Week 3: Atoms and void; Week 4: Book 1 as a whole, poetry and philosophy; Week 5: Epicurean ethics; Proem of book 2; Week 6: The mortal soul; Week 7: The fear of death.; Week 8: Cosmology and critique of teleology; Week 9: Primitive man; Week 10: Civilization and its consequences; Week 11: Book 6 and the plague; recap of key issues: poetry and philosophy
Assessment Information
Written Exam 60%, Coursework 40%, Practical Exam 0%
Additional Restrictions
This course CANNOT be taken alongside Latin 2A (LATI08011) or Latin 2B (LATI08012). Unless you are nominated on a Classics or HCA exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in two 3rd year Classics courses each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a third course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the [September / January] Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.
view the timetable and further details for this course
Disclaimer
All course information obtained from this visiting student course finder should be regarded as provisional. We cannot guarantee that places will be available for any particular course. For more information, please see the visiting student disclaimer: