Phillips Exeter Academy

Classical Languages

Vergil – Intensive
Classical Languages

The 511/521/531 sequence offers a close reading of selections from Vergil’s epic Aeneid, Latin poetry’s defining achievement and an enduring monument of world literature. This intensive sequence covers more material than the 510/520/530 sequence...

Catullus – Intensive
Classical Languages

This course is dedicated to reading selections from the short carmina of a revolutionary young lyric poet, Gaius Valerius Catullus. Love, hate, betrayal, loyalty, invective and the art of writing itself are among the array of topics that Catullus explored in...

Horace – Intensive
Classical Languages

In this course, students study many of Horace’s lyric poems (Odes) and at least one of his Satires. Horace used his verse to discuss topics essential to fundamental human happiness in the face of inevitable changes both personal and political. In...

Ovid – Intensive
Classical Languages

This course explores in depth the wittiest of Roman poets, Publius Ovidius Naso. First, we will read three of his Amores, the love poems that made him famous; then, the opening of the Ars Amatoria, the seduction manual that got him in trouble with the emperor...

Elementary Greek
Classical Languages

This sequence of courses introduces students to the study of ancient Greek, specifically the Attic dialect. No prior knowledge of Greek, Latin, or another inflected language is assumed. The most common forms and syntax are covered within a structured program...

Intermediate Greek
Classical Languages

This sequence continues the study of ancient Greek from the first year. By the end of the second term, students will read adapted selections from Herodotus, who wrote about the Persian Wars with a multicultural sensibility ahead of his time. In the third...

Elementary Greek – Intensive
Classical Languages

This accelerated introductory sequence is designed for students who wish to complete the Greek requirement for the Classical Diploma (Latin concentration) in just one year. It covers the basic vocabulary, structure, and grammar of Attic Greek in two and a...

Plato’s Crito – Intensive
Classical Languages

This course begins with a review of beginning Greek that includes readings in Xenophon’s Memorabilia and then turns to the study of Plato’s Crito, a prose dialogue in which Socrates discusses the proper response of a citizen condemned unjustly by...

Plato’s Apology – Intensive
Classical Languages

Students read Plato’s Apology in its entirety. While continuing the study of Greek prose grammar and style, this course presents students with the fundamental challenge of Plato’s Socrates, a thinker who refused to expound doctrine but demanded...

Homer’s Iliad – Intensive
Classical Languages

Homer’s Iliad is the earliest work of Western literature and perhaps its greatest. In this course, students will read Book 1 in the original Greek, attuning themselves to what Matthew Arnold gave as the dominant characteristics of Homeric style:...