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Mr. Ganiban
212 Twilight
443-5888
ganiban@panther.middlebury.edu
Under construction
A. Overview
It is easy to speak ill of Nero, for he was in many ways a monster.
He killed his mother, step-brother, and wife. He may even have
burnt down Rome in order to build a new palace. Despite his cruelty,
Nero encouraged the arts. He was himself a self-styled poet and
artist (in fact, as he was dying, he is said to have proclaimed:
qualis artifex pereo), and Roman literature experienced
a kind of revival during his reign. In this course we will read
two satirical works by authors close to the emperor Nero. Written
probably at the beginning of Nero's reign (54-68 C.E.), Seneca's
Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii (The Pumpkinification
of the Divine Claudius) parodies the death and deification
of the emperor Claudius and the rebirth of Rome anticipated under
Nero (Claudius' great-nephew, adopted son, and successor). Petronius'
Satyricon, on the other hand, is a riotous and risqué
tale of the (mis)adventures of the narrator Encolpius that makes
fun of the dissolute times of mid-first century C.E. Rome. We
will try to make sense of these intriguing works and see how they
reflect the life, morality and literary values of the Neronian
Age.
B. Books
Available for purchase at the College Store:
P. Roth (ed.), Seneca, Apocolocyntosis
Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars
G. Lawall (ed.), Petronius: Selections from the Satyricon
Petronius, The Satyricon (trans. Walsh)
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