Top products from r/classics

Catullus

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Betrayal-Catullus-Bruce-Arnold/dp/0130433454/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=22K0V9X7X9C74&keywords=love+and+betrayal+a+catullus+reader&qid=1558536403&s=gateway&sprefix=love+and+betrayal+%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

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Ovid

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Transformation-Reader-English-Latin/dp/067358920X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28WT9VPC88Q7S&keywords=love+and+transformation+an+ovid+reader&qid=1558536463&s=gateway&sprefix=ovid+love+and+trans%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1-spell

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https://www.amazon.com/Ovids-Amores-Book-One-Commentary/dp/0806141441/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=amores+book+1+ovid&qid=1558536435&s=gateway&sr=8-2

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https://www.amazon.com/Ovid-Metamorphoses-VIII-Latin-Texts/dp/1853997226/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=ovid+metamorphoses+8&qid=1558536602&s=gateway&sr=8-11

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Cicero

https://www.amazon.com/Cicero-Pro-Caelio-Marcus-Tullius/dp/0865165599/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=cicero+pro+caelio&qid=1558536500&s=gateway&sr=8-1

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I really enjoyed Ovid at your level, which is why he is over-represented in this list. I know Perseus has commentaries on all the Catullus poems except the more risque ones. Unfortunately, those are also left out of the book I posted here. I would probably go with the Catullus one or the first/second Ovid books, just because I think love poetry is entertaining. The Cicero was definitely more difficult, but had a lot of juicy insults and was also quite fun. I used all of these and they definitely helped me improve my Latin, so whatever you choose will be good, just pick something you'll have fun reading. Good luck and enjoy!

Some of your salt I understand, but mainly you are arguing from unstable ground. You say "logically inconsistent," so I am going to assume you are interested in logic and facts. That's great. Let's start with the logic of a "social construct."

>The brothers and the guy with "4 degrees" seem to think that race is a social construct. If so, then how did they categorize "White Lady" as white?

You seem to think that acknowledging something as a construct means that it has no affect over how people live or identify themselves. That is flawed logic. Before we think about race, it might be easier to consider another construct: national identity. National identifiers like American or Roman are, of course, made up, i.e. socially constructed, and they change over time. The boundaries of Romanness/Americanness are constantly in flux, the definitions fluid and ever-changing. Does national identity correspond with geographical boundaries, or citizenship rights, or language, or shared religion, or skin color, or governmental system, or what? Again, over time, the answer has been yes to all of those things and no to all of them. Yet, even as we constantly redefine what it means "to be American," even as we recognize that we can redefine what it means, that identity matters a great deal to many people and it measurably affects peoples' lives. I call myself and others Americans, knowing full well that our national identity is made up, but it still can be a useful shortcut for understanding something about one another. So, to consider race, when people call it a social construct, they are pointing out that it only exists insofar as we, as social beings, define it. But the things that people make up still very seriously affect their lives. The brothers in the video recognize that the notion of "blackness," which was something that human beings constructed alongside the idea of "whiteness," has shaped the way their world arranges itself and their relationships in it (hence calling the black man "brother" and the white women "white lady"). Blackness is made up, just as made up as Americanness, but both seriously affect how we live our lives and the types of relationships open to people.

>Yes, the term "white" has undergone changes in its definition by racists, but has the term "black" undergone any changes?

Short answer, yes. There's a reason we used to have terms like "mulatto," "mestizo" and "Creole" in America. In South Africa, "mixed" is still a racial category distinct from black or white.

>If race is a social construct then why would it matter if the ancient world was entirely white?

So, the video is trying to point out how the alt-right tries to co-opt the ancient world's "whiteness" as an identity building tactic when they argue for white ethno-states. Here's one good article about fashwave propaganda; here are three more pieces about alt-right using the whiteness of statues for their anti-illectual ideological aims from New Yorker, then Forbes, and another from HyperAllergic. They are trying to point out that our idea of whiteness did not exist in antiquity, but modern fascists still like to appeal to an idea of a transhistorical white/European culture. The stakes here are paramount, as evidenced by growing fascist and white nationalist trends from around the globe. Anyone interested in classics has a responsibility to call out bad scholarship anywhere they see it. Our discipline is currently being ransacked by those uninterested in the beauty and complexity of ancient life and literature, and we should be the first to point out their ideological manipulations.

>One of those degrees must have missed anything to do with the basic physiological differences between the races. Skeletal structure for one, is a good indicator of race. Hell, the production of more melanin in the brothers' skin is proof that race is not a social construct

So, here you've just got the facts wrong. I'm going to assume you aren't arguing from bad faith, but rather are actually interested in "the truth," or some form of it. So, let's hope that we can use logic and facts together to sort this one out! One easy place to start is National Geographic's "There’s No Scientific Basis for Race—It's a Made-Up Label". It's a good, quick read. Give it a try. If you don't like those facts, bounce on over to "Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races", from Human Biology, or American Psychologist's "Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race", (both of which are behind a paywall, but as long as you are on a college campus, you have access to them). Then, you could follow up with Scientific American's "Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue", which is not the best article on its own, but links you to the study it discusses. If you'd prefer a book, you could get How Race Is Made, or, you know, one of any modern book written about race besides pseudo-science like Bell Curve. Good ol' facts and logic!

So, as you know by now from doing some reading, bone structure and melanin production actually don't correspond with different racial subcategories, because those categories are constantly in flux. They are, again, socially constructed labels. I hope this helps make your salty dish taste a little sweeter!

Hi there! As a graduated classics major, it warms my heart you want to get back into Latin. For relearning Latin I would suggest finding a workbook of the appropriate level and doing it for an hour every day before you hit your classes (say a week or two). Depending on the teacher they will typically let you ease back into groove of Latin as even a summer away from the materials takes time to recover. One that I used to keep up and that my friend who uses it for her English Ph. D. to keep up her skills is on one Cupid ans Psyche. Link below.
Feel free to PM me if you have any questions and bona fortuna!


https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0199120471/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1499631745&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=cupid+and+psyche&dpPl=1&dpID=51P4KC3A54L&ref=plSrch

Since he’s a classics major I’d recommend this pencil holder:
Caesar Pencil Holder
I got it as a birthday present last year and all my classics friends + some of my non classics friends love it

P.G. Walsh is a very modern translator, so all of his works are under copyright still. I mean, you can go to the dark recesses of the Internet and get a copy, but I would not be able to help you with that.

My recommendation is to go get it used off Amazon. I'm looking right now, and it's $7.25 there with free shipping. I don't know about you, but that's not really prohibitive. Just read it and stick it on your shelf so you can read it again in a few years.

For a real "nuts and bolts" approach, I would use Hanson and Quinn's "Greek: An Intensive Course". It's intense indeed, but it shows you everything behind the curtains since it is a grammar based approach. The are a lot of other books. Some like Athenaze try to use a more intuitive (and slower) approach, with a lot more vocab. I'm sure people here will have other suggestions, but I don't have experience with Reading Greek.

This is the book on the Fayum portraits that I mentioned: The Mysterious Fayum Portraits: Faces from Ancient Egypt https://www.amazon.com/dp/050028217X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_s9FzDbVTZS8XF

Unfortunately, it’s ridiculously expensive on Amazon. Not sure why, because it’s still in print and like $25 at the bookshop near my house in Cairo. Maybe AUC Press doesn’t have a distributor in the US. Perhaps you can find it a university library.

Good luck with your work and research!

Whatever you do, don't use Wheelock.

If you'd like a class, do this: http://www.paideiainstitute.org/intensive_latin_and_greek_summer_2016

If you'd just like a book, use this:
https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia/dp/1585104205?ie=UTF8&keywords=familia%20romana&qid=1458311671&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

Are you reading an annotated text or just straight Latin? If you don't already have a copy I highly recommend [Pharr's version](Vergil's Aeneid, Books I-VI (Latin Edition) (Bks. 1-6) (English and Latin Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865164215/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_RcStDb8RST3Z9) for its grammar notes!

Benner's Selections from Homer's Iliad would seem perfect for you. It has notes, vocab, and a short Homeric grammar at the end. Amazon link.

My intermediate year of Latin (second year) began with Ovid's Metamorphoses. This is the text we used. You'll start with maybe 3-5 lines per night, let's say, but by the end of the book you should be getting to full stanzas in the same time as it once took you a couplet or two. Eventually, you'll be able to do 100 lines+ per sitting. Of course, it's all about how responsible you are.

There's an edition published by Benediction Classics that is complete. It's 1008 pages long.

The same complete translation was also published by the Modern Library in one volume in 1975. You might be able to find a secondhand copy.

Both books are the 1859 revision by Clough of the so-called Dryden translation.

Get yourself a purple Virgil. Industry standard for students at your level.

• Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, Pars I: Familia Romana
  
• Wheelock's Latin

Boatwright, Gargola, Lenski, and Talbert's The Romans: From Village to Empire is my textbook of choice for Roman history

Milman Parry's The Making of Homeric Verse (Oxford, 1971) and his student Albert Bates Lord's [The Singer of Tales*](https://www.amazon.com/Singer-Tales-Third-Hellenic-Studies/dp/0674975731/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=singer+of+tales&qid=1557622018&s=gateway&sr=8-1) (Harvard, 1960) (Holy shit! 3rd edition is coming out in October!) never cease to fascinate me. I think that they'd be even more interesting if I re-read them now, with an eye to hip-hop being a modern expression of a lot of the oral techniques that Parry and Lord identified in oral poets from Homer to the early 20th-century Balkans.

There is also the concept of revenge. Revenge comes about through means of either some form of injustice, or blind misunderstanding.

Blindness is a theme throughout all of them either literally or figuratively to what is believed versus what is real.

There are several essays written about Elizabethan revenge tragedies and classical revenge tragedies. Seneca wrote many revenge tragedies and he borrowed on the Greeks. Shakespeare in turn borrowed from Seneca even mentioning Seneca in Hamlet.

Look at this description of four Elizabethan tragedies: "Each of the four plays here subverts the genre, and deals with fundamental moral questions about justice and the individual, while registering the strains of life in an increasingly fragile social hierarchy."

https://www.amazon.com/Four-Revenge-Tragedies-Revengers-Atheists/dp/0199540535

It is no coincidence that the themes are consistent with classical tragedies. So look at the moral questions of the individual vs. justice/the state in the context of a fragile society on the verge of collapse because of what the rulers are doing.

Hamlet fits within these plays very nicely. It is a tragedy concerning rulers, there is a context of war. There are themes of justice and fate, there are questions as to whether the main characters have redeeming qualities.

There is no vacuum here. This question has been looked at and redeveloped for centuries. You could ask about what are the themes that link Othello, Richard III, Hamlet, and the Spanish Tragedy.

You might consider looking at the essays that ask for comparisons between more modern tragedies and the classics. Remember that the Latin playwrights followed the Greek tradition and look broadly at concepts in tragedy or revenge tragedies.