Provisional Outline

Week 1 – Who, What, Why: Reconsidering Imperial Greek Literature

Readings: T. Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic. Oxford 2005; Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism. Berkeley 2013; W.A. Johnson and D.S. Richter (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic. Oxford 2017.

Week 2 – In Search of Lost Greece I: Pausanias on the Landscape of Roman Athens

Readings: Description of Greece Book 1; selected secondary literature by S. Alcock, W. Hutton.

Week 3 – In Search of Lost Greece II: Pausanias on the Landscape of Roman Corinth

Readings: Description of Greece Book 2; selected secondary literature by S. Alcock, W. Hutton.

Week 4 – How to Teach an Emperor: Dio and Trajan

Readings: Kingship Orations (1–4); C.P. Jones, The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom. Harvard 1978; selection from T. Whitmarsh, The Politics of Imitation. Oxford 2001.

Week 5 – Simply the Best: Aelius Aristides’ Dreams of (Classical) Glory

Readings: Sacred Tales (selection), Or. 28; W.V. Harris and B. Holmes (eds.), Aelius Aristides between Greece, Rome and the Gods. Leiden 2008; J. Downie, At the Limits of Art: A Literary Study of Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi.

Week 6 – Reading Week

Week 7 – Aristides Comes to Town: Classicism for Imperial Communities

Readings: Orr. 18, 24, 46; W.V. Harris and B. Holmes (eds.), Aelius Aristides between Greece, Rome and the Gods. Leiden 2008; J. Downie, At the Limits of Art: A Literary Study of Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi.

Week 8 – The Limits of Education: Lucian on Classicism

Readings: On Salaried Posts; The Ignorant Book Collector; selection from T. Whitmarsh, The Politics of Imitation. Oxford 2001.

Week 9 – Just for Fun? Meaning(s) of Lucianic Satire

Readings: Icaromenippus; True History (selection); selection from K. ní Mheallaigh, Reading Fiction with Lucian: Fakes, Freaks and Hyperreality. Cambridge 2014.

Week 10 – Hellenism at the Edges: Heliodorus Aetiopian Novel  

Readings: Aetiopica (selection); T. Whitmarsh, Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel: Returning Romance. Cambridge 2011.

Term 3: Revision/exam preparation