So what kind of literature can our students expect to be reading in the course of their study? Here are details of some of the most common Classical authors studied by students here at Dauntsey’s.

LATIN –

          VIRGIL – The most famous Latin poet of them all, his Aeneid tells of the adversities faced by Aeneas and his fellow Trojan refugees as they struggle to make a new home for themselves in the West.

        CATULLUS – Tender, passionate, obscene, elegant, furious, outrageous – the poems of this explosive and eclectic Latin lyric poet are all of these things. Two thousand years on they still provoke controversy and strong reactions from their readers.

        OVID – Witty, irreverent, just a mite subversive, and with William Shakespeare as the president of his fan club, Ovid is the voice that the Emperor Augustus didn’t want you to hear.

        CICERO – A daring and impassioned orator, Cicero’s incisive and racy courtroom speeches have served as models for public speakers ever since they were written.

        TACTITUS - This cynical and subversive historian dishes the dirt on the paranoia, scandal, and murderous excess of Rome’s maddest, baddest Caesars.

        HORACE – Poems of love, death, wine, politics and friendship. Horace is the most elegant and complex of the Augustan poets.

CLASSICS –

          HOMER – The father of Western literature and still one of its unquestioned masters, Homer brings compassion, insight and tragedy to his fantastic tales of gods, adventure and great heroes whose names we still remember.

        AESCHYLUS – The world’s earliest surviving playwright, Aeschylus’ plays are masterful, from the triumphant pessimism of the Persians to the harrowing and uplifting Oresteia trilogy.

        SOPHOCLES – Perhaps the greatest Greek playwright, his Oedipus Rex is a master-class in dramatic irony, as well as the inspiration for a certain Viennese psychoanalyst’s most celebrated theory …

        EURIPIDES – An innovative and experimental writer whose plays were controversial in his day, and is today perhaps the most-performed of Greek tragedians. He wrote about the conflict between law and nature, authority and morality, tradition and free thinking, and his disturbing masterpieces Medea and The Bacchae are today acknowledged as two of the greatest plays ever written.

        ARISTOPHANES – One of history’s greatest satirists, he mercilessly stripped the politicians of his day of their pretexts and their dignity. His seemingly endless dramatic energy, his awesome array of appalling puns and his easy facility for the obscene make him one of Greek literature’s most appealing authors, and his Lysistrata is justly celebrated as a landmark in the history of comedy.

Classics Home