Religions of Ancient Greece and Rome (a course extra fines)

Members of the intersession group

• Dr. E. Marinova
• Dr. V. Gerdjikova
• Dr. Olga Osipova
• N. Sharankov

Project Aims

The goal of this project is to design a new interdisciplinary course which combines Classics and history of religion. Religious studies is a complex discipline including courses of classical civilization, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, and an optional course "Religions of Ancient Greece and Rome".

The course "Religions of Ancient Greece and Rome" is addressed to the students of the Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies of the Moscow State University, who have just learned classical languages at the level sufficient to understand and analyse Ancient Greek and Latin original texts from philological as well as religious and historical point of view.

This course is based on a material of ancient narrative sources, with special interest to the Greek and Latin religious terms. It means that the texts chosen should contain terms designating various aspects of religious notions and cult practice of Ancient Greeks and Romans.

Topics to discuss

The course consists on lectures and workshops and should include following topics to discuss:

• Survey and classification of ancient narrative sources related to religions of Ancient Greece and Rome;
• Greek and Roman pantheon;
• Greek and Roman temples;
• Priests in Ancient Greece and Rome;
• Greek and Roman cult practice;
• Greek and Roman festivals;
• Mysteries in Ancient Greece and Rome;
• Greek and Roman divination;
• Religion and the state in Ancient Greece and Rome.

Bibliography

A list of texts used should include passages from the following works:

• Epic poetry (Homer, Virgil, Ovid);
• Historiography (Herodotus, Thucydides, Diodorus of Sicily, Livy);
• Philosophy (Cicero, Macrobius, Varro);
• Oratory (Lysias);
• Scholia (Servius on Virgil);
• Lexicography (Festus);
• Christian literature (Arnobius, Tertullian).

The plan mentioned above needs to be revised in co-operation with scholars who teach similar courses in other European universities by introducing newly acquired knowledge of teaching methods and of new texts. For example, there is no epigraphic material in the list of texts, so it would be very useful to include some inscriptions from Bulgaria illustrating religious practice in Thrace and in the Roman empire.

The expected project outcome

• Design of the new modified course based on interdisciplinary approach on Ancient Greek and Latin narrative texts in co-operation with researchers of various areas of Classics from other countries;
• Design of an improved manual and textbook on religions of ancient Greece and Rome for the Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies of MSU.

Stages of team-work would be the following

• Discuss all the proposals and specificate the syllabus – by 01.01.06.
• Group responsibility of the various parts of the course – by 01.03.06.
• Assemble materials – by 01.09.06.
• Present a version of the course at the September 2006 contact session.