Reed College
Reed College

Humanities 110

Introduction to the Humanities

Paper Topics | Spring 2014 | Paper 3

Due Saturday, April 25th, 5 p.m., in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox.
Target length: 1,500 words

Choose one of the following questions:

  1. In Book 1 of On the Nature of Things, Lucretius, following the Greek philosopher Epicurus, argues in a series of steps that the only way to make sense of the world we see around us is to posit atoms and void as the ultimate principles of reality. What are the main arguments Lucretius uses to convince his readers that everything we see can be understood in terms of invisible atoms moving in the void? How successful is he in showing that this is the only explanation that can account for the way the world is?

  2. In On Duties 3, Cicero argues that what is right and what is advantageous cannot conflict. How strong are Cicero's arguments for this? Is he able to successfully show that this is true in all the cases he examines where there appears to be a conflict between right and advantage? Which cases, if any, do you think pose the greatest difficulties for his position, and why?

  3. Like Darius's Bisitun monument, the Res Gestae of Augustus was a monumental autobiographical inscription.Compare how these two monuments use text, image, and space to represent political power. How does Augustus's self-representation compare to Darius's? How does Roman imperial ideology echo the political ideology of Persia? What marks Roman ideology as distinctive? (Note: to answer this question you'll want to research the context in which the Res Gestae was originally displayed.)

  4. Compare the Ara Pacis with the five points of Hellenism outlined in Pollitt's "Introduction" from Art in the Hellenistic Age (e-reserve). How do the differences and similarities between the Pergamon Altar and the Ara Pacis illustrate either continuities or breaks with Hellenism in Roman monumental representation?

  5. Compare the models of political virtue offered by Lucretia (in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita) and Dido (in Virgil's Aeneid). To what extent do they represent the same idea about the roles of women in political life?

  6. One of Aeneas' and the Trojans' most formidable opponents when they get to Italy is the female warrior Camilla (Aeneid 7.1055-1072 and 11.658-1209, Mandelbaum edition). In what ways do Camilla's character, qualities, actions, and death affect the way readers might interpret the main themes of the poem?

  7. In Augustus's wife's villa in Prima Porta, the walls of the dining room were decorated with garden scenes (see below and http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/vrcwork,2739). Doing a close reading of the scene depicted, compare the representation of plants and animals in Livia's house to the representation of plants and animals on the lower relief sculptures on and/or the interior of the Ara Pacis. How do their purposes, styles, and motifs compare?
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  8. Compare two different accounts of the origins of human society. At least one of these accounts must come from someone writing in or about Rome (e.g. Polybius, Lucretius, Ovid), but you may draw on another culture or context for the other account (e.g. Genesis, Works and Days, the Republic). How do these narratives of the origins of human society reflect different (or similar) ways of thinking about key issues such as human nature, human difference, social hierarchy, and/or good government? How do these origin stories speak to the wider concerns of their respective texts?

  9. In Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Thomas Laqueur argues that people in ancient Greece and Rome understood sex fundamentally differently than we do today. Laqueur argues that during the era in which Ovid wrote, for example, sex was understood using a "one-sex" model of human anatomy in which "There was no fundamental difference between female and male bodies....Male genitalia were ...more developed, but not fundamentally different from female genitalia" (paraphrased in Jorunn Økland, Women in their Place, 46-47). As a result, ancients believed a person's character, gender, and even sex could be transformed. Using the episode of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus in book IV of Ovid's Metamorphoses, explain what you believe Ovid's vision of sexual difference is. Does this episode support Laqueur's claim for a one-sex model in antiquity?

  10. In "On Providence," Seneca argues that, "God's attitude to good men is a father's; his love for them is a manly love" (30). How does Seneca implicitly or explicitly define manhood? Who among the examples Seneca gives best exemplifies Seneca's vision of manliness in human form, and why?

  11. Write your own essay topic. If you choose this option, it is necessary to have your conference leader approve your topic before you start working on it.