Why Classics: Antiquity Lives on in Modern Society
By Ryan Burns
Latin was a compulsory class in sixth grade, and no one was excited. “Isn’t it a dead language? What’s the point of learning Latin if we can never speak it,” my fellow students would say. I was one of these people. When we got to class, we started learning an endless list of vocabulary on body parts and animals, and…
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A Facultea with Professor Emily Greenwood
By Riley Glickman
A recap of the Classical Studies Undergraduate Advisory Board’s recent Facultea with Dr. Emily Greenwood, a professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Harvard University who is taking part in Penn’s Classics visiting lecturer program.
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Revisiting Lofty Arches: the Transmigration of Souls in Aeneid 6
By Erin Schott
In the beginning, the inner spirit
nourishes the sky, lands, and liquid fields,
the shining globe of the moon and Titan’s stars…
A Case Study in How the Plague Plagues Cities:
Sickness in Oedipus Rex and The Gods Are Not To Blame
By Lily Nesvold
Many are familiar with Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex; however, fewer know its modern adaptation, Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not To Blame. Published in 1971, the novel is set in the Yoruba kingdom and tells the story of Odewale, king of Kutuje, in three acts, much like the original Sophoclean play. Oedipus Rex and The Gods Are Not To Blame portray how illness plagues the respective cities of Thebes and Kutuje. Additionally, the action in these stories…
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