ANME 254 - Trading People: Greek Literature and the Rise of Money

How are relationships - relationships between friends, spouses, lovers, children and parents, fellow citizens, soldiers and commanders, students and teachers - like or unlike commercial transactions? And what, in fact, characterizes commercial transactions? In Classical Athens these were especially pressing questions, since Athenian society had recently been transformed by monetization. This both supported a boom in local and interstate trade and provided a new conceptual framework for thinking about social relationships and obligations, and the great Athenian literary forms of this period-tragedy, comedy, the Socratic dialogue - reflect and respond to this conceptual pressure. This course will explore both the process of monetization and how Classical Athenian literature explored and responded to the questions it raised. Likely readings will include Euripides’ Medea, Sophocles’ Antigone, Aristophanes’ Knights, Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Plato’s Republic; students will achieve a broad understanding of these works as well as of how they address and are shaped by issues of monetization, so that the course also functions as a broad-based introduction to Classical Greek literature.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): LIT 254
Not offered: 2026-27
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a non-English language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a non-English language, or works of the visual or performing arts).