Our study group is located at Yahoo. Membership is restricted and requires approval (to prevent spammers) from the moderator. Anyone is welcome to join our study group -- please sign up and send us a short introduction that tells us a little about yourself and why you would like to join our group.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/areteclassical/
For more information, please contact us at areteclassical-owner@yahoogroups.com.
All of the books we will be reading are available online as easy to read e-texts. You are welcome to read using any translation you may have on hand or can borrow from your public library. Many readers enjoy reading from more than one translation and feel they can better experience the beauty of the writing when they read a more modern translation (in english prose).
Links to Great Books
St. John's College Reading Lists
Mortimer Adler's Great Books Reading List
Our next book in our Ancient History rotation will be Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey. There are many, many translations available online, in libraries, and reprinted and distributed through popular booksellers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookstar). The links below include online translations as well as suggested translators (most popular). Please feel free to use whatever source you may have on hand or locally available.
As usual, we will post to the User Group using one of the online e-texts (Samuel Butler translation). You are welcome to read along with us through the group list, or at your own pace using another text/translation. We will be posting study questions from Dr. Donald Mills Greek Literature Course (Syracuse University). These questions are posted as discussion starters -- feel free to join in or post any of your own questions that you may have during your reading assignment.
Our reading pace will be approximately two chapters per week for 12 weeks. This will allow us to finish Homer around the end of March.
Homer's The Odyssey
In Print
Study Guides and Discovery Questions
The Code of Hammurabi (1792 to 1750 B.C.)
The next book in our Ancient History rotation will be a study of the ancient laws of Hammurabi. For this study we will be using the Avalon Project at Yale University for our source. Charles F. Horne, Ph.D. writes this about King Hammurabi:
"Hammurabi was the ruler who chiefly established the greatness of Babylon, the world's first metropolis. Many relics of Hammurabi's reign [1795-1750 BC] have been preserved, and today we can study this remarkable King . . . as a wise law-giver in his celebrated code. Hammurabi is the first "example of a ruler proclaiming publicly to his people an entire body of laws, arranged in orderly groups, so that all men might read and know what was required of them."
A brief overview of Babylonian law is explained here by Rev. Claude Hermann Walter Johns, M.A. Litt.D: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/hammpre.htm
Historical Context
"The Code of Hammurabi (also Hammurapi), the most complete and perfect extant collection of Babylonian laws, was developed during the reign of Hammurabi (r. 1792-1750 B.C.) of the first dynasty of Babylon. The code consists of Hammurabi’s legal decisions, which were collected toward the end of his reign and inscribed on a diorite stele set up in Babylon’s Temple of Marduk, a temple named for the national god of Babylon. The 282 case laws include economic provisions (prices, tariffs, trade, and commercial regulations), family law (marriage and divorce), as well as provisions dealing with criminal law (assault, theft) and civil law (slavery, debt). Penalties for breaking the laws varied according to the status of the offender and the circumstances of the offense. The code survives only in the Semitic Akkadian tongue, but it is clear that it was also meant to apply to the non-Semitic Sumerians, representing an integration of the traditions of both peoples. Hammurabi’s Code is the most complete record of ancient law in existence." (Source The LibertyFund.org http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/AuthorBioPage.php?recordID=0113)
Wikipedia has an excellent biography on King Hammurabi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi Please read this short bio or use your encyclopedia and lookup background reference information on this ancient ruler.
Helpful Explanations and Other Versions
The Avalon Project's e-Text at Yale Universities School of Law has the L.W. King translation (1901) online with commentary by Charles F. Horne, (1915) and Claude Hermann Walter Johns, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed, 1910. This is the version I will be posting to the list.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/hammenu.htm
Fordham University has King's translation online as well. This version is a 'plain' copy which might prove useful for those who would like to print a section to read at a time.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.html
The LibertyFund has a downloadable e-text of this codex, translated by Robert Francis Harper in 1904. For those of you who prefer reading a printed book, this might be a good translation to download and print out:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Book.php?recordID=0762
Richard Hooker's (Washington State University) Online Archive has King's 1901 version here,
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/CODE.HTM
Please feel free to choose an e-text version that works best for you.
Paperback Resources
For those who prefer a paperback edition, here are some popular choices. Your library may have copies, so check there first. Neither book was available in my public library so I am not sure of their exact availabilty worldwide.
The Code of Hammurabi (Paperback)by L. W. King, ISBN 1419157035 (in print through Amazon.com)
The Code of Hammurabi King of Babylon (Paperback) by Robert Francis Harper, ISBN 1410201023 (OOP available through used booksellers - pricey!)
Reading Schedule
The Code of Hammurabi is broken into three parts: introduction, the law, and epilogue. There are approximately 282 laws and while they cover a number of topics, they really do not break out into specific groupings to aid in our reading. My suggestion is that we simply read through them as follows:
1st post: Introduction
2nd post: Laws 1-50
3rd post: Laws 51-100
4th post: Laws 101-150
5th post: Laws 151-200
6th post: Laws 201-end
7th post: Epilogue
This will take us through November and into December. We will break for the holidays and then pick up Homer's The Odyssey in January.
Study and Discovery Questions
As you read each law, consider the following:
For general discussion on this book:
Other Good Links
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Popular Modern Versions - Reprints
In addition to these online e-texts, there are many good translations available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, many classics collections, as well as Dover and Signet Thrift collections. Listed below are a few of the more popular modern prose translations.
Other Good Links
Study Guides and Book Notes
Many people find study guides helpful when reading classical literature. The following links include study guides, notes, and discovery questions to help you in your reading assignment.
What, then, is education? Who is the educated mother? What ought her teaching and influence to be?She continues with...
What is education? We are apt to think we know very well what education is, and when asked this question give an answer which we hope will satisfy ourselves and others. When, however, we begin to think seriously on the subject we are surprised to find how dim and hazy our opinions are, and we cannot be satisfied until we try to classify them and arrive at some definite conclusions. Speaking of education therefore in reference to women as mothers, I should venture to say its first and prime object ought to be to make women think, and that all education which does not tend to make thinking easy and natural fails of its object and is not education.
The original meaning of the word educate is to draw forth; education should therefore aim at drawing forth all the different powers of human beings. True education should train the intellect, establish principles, and regulate the heart. In answering the question, what is education? --especially in reference to girls --I would strike this threefold cord, believing that if the intellect is trained to habits of thought by the development of its faculties, the conscience to the perception of the reasonableness of principles founded on intelligible moral laws, and the heart to a wise regulation of its spontaneous action, we may hope for results which will be most likely to prepare women for the particular duties and responsibilities which motherhood brings.
Who, then, is the educated mother? The educated mother is pre-eminently a woman who thinks, and the results of her regulated thought will be seen in the daily administration of her home.and concludes with the following remarks:
The educated mother must, however, be much more than a nursery machine and a technical instructress. Realising that the children of to-day will rapidly develop into individuals keen to learn and be taught, she will always be alive to the necessity of cultivating her own mind, and the work of self-education and improvement will go on for her while life lasts. It is absolutely necessary a mother should know how to care for the small bodies, but it is equally important she should understand and satisfy the unfolding intellects of her children. It is a painful spectacle, that of a mother who has allowed her children to outstrip her as thinking beings, and can no longer keep pace with them in their pursuits and interests.
The educated mother knows this, and will keep well in touch with all the interests of life. Religion, politics, social and philanthropic problems are all of absorbing interest to her, and she recognises she can keep her children's confidence, some of whom probably are cleverer then herself, only by habits of thoughtful interest in all which concerns humanity. Beyond this the educated mother will seek to prepare her sons and daughters for that trying period in their lives when, emerging from childhood, they stand on the threshold of woman and manhood, oppressed often by new, bewildering thoughts, and open to guidance in a peculiarly sensitive and receptive manner. For this critical period the mother has already prepared herself by her knowledge of laws human and divine, and she earnestly endeavours to be herself the guide of her developing children.
In conclusion, the influence and teaching of the educated mother is all for righteousness; and the formation in her children of character, based on self-control and self-sacrifice, the daily object of her life.It is therefore our desire to enable mother's to continue to educate themselves through a classical study program. With the advent of the Internet the canon of Western thought is now readily available to everyone regardless of their physical location. There is therefore no reason for a mother to not be able to continue to enrich and enlarge her education for any reason: whether cost, inconvenience, or lack of companionship.
The Influence and Teaching of the Educated Mother By Mrs. Alfred Booth [Paper read at Bristol Conference of Women Workers. Reprinted by kind permission of Bristol Ladies' Association for the Care of Girls.] 1893/4 Parents Review Volume 4 pgs 081-090
Homer's Iliad
Our first book in our Ancient History rotation will be Homer's epci poem, The Iliad. There are many, many translations available online, in libraries, and reprinted and distributed through popular booksellers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookstar). The links below include online translations as well as suggested translators (most popular). Please feel free to use whatever source you may have on hand or locally available.
Popular Modern Versions - Reprints
In addition to these online e-texts, there are many good translations available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, many classics collections, as well as Dover and Signet Thrift collections. Listed below are a few of the more popular modern prose translations.
Other Good Links
Study Guides and Book Notes
Many people find study guides helpful when reading classical literature. SparkNotes has a complete classics library available online for free.
Study and Discovery Questions for Homer's The Iliad
Study and Discovery Questions are courtesy of http://duke.usask.ca/~porterj/CourseNotes/IliadStiles.html#unit2 by Lewis Styles; The Iliad Study Questions from SparksNotes.com, and Carol Hepburn (Arete Moderator).
Books I and II
Books III and IV
Thersites = "bold one."
the ugliest = aischistos = "most ugly, most shameful."
It seems like just yesterday . . . at Aulis: actually, it was nine years before.
aegis = a sort of shawl that Athena (and other gods) wear and use like a shield—for protection and to strike terror into the hearts of their enemies.
Ares . . . sister Eris = "Strife."
Books V and VI