Paper Topics and Requirements

The papers for this course are not meant to be research papers but essays, although you may want to consult modern scholarship for one of the three, if appropriate. The focus of each paper must be a text, specifically, one or more of the assigned readings in this course; if you wish to incorporate readings from other sections of the program, please discuss your approach with me first.

The basic rules are these:

Confine your scrutiny to texts listed for each of the three papers (this proceeds in chronological order).
Paper 1: Gilgamesh, Presocratics and Sophists, Herodotus, Thucydides

Paper 2: Sophocles (Antigone or Oedipus the King), Euripides (Hippolytus), Aristophanes (Clouds), Plato (Euthyphro, Apology), Xenophon (Apology), Demosthenes, Polybius

Paper 3: Cicero, Livy, Seneca, Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius, Gospel of Nicodemus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Symmachus, Ambrose, Athanasius, Augustine, Gregory of Tours, Abelard

Please go to this link and read paragraph A12.

Length: 5-8 pages

Due by the end of business, i.e., 5:00 p.m., on the dates stated. You may deliver them to my mailbox (first floor, 481 Main Street) or to my office (room 301, 481 Main Street), or hand them in early in class. Late papers lose 10 percentage points per weekday.

Drafts are not required but encouraged. You may rewrite any of the first two papers and turn it back in within a week of the day that I have the papers ready to be returned in class.