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Eta Sigma Phi

students sitting outside in the hogan cortyard

Our department is home to the Delta Lambda chapter of Eta Sigma Phi (ΗΣΦ), the national Classics Honorary Society.

Classics Honor Society

Eta Sigma Phi was founded in 1914 at the University of Chicago. The society seeks to promote interest in classical studies along with closer fraternal relationships among students interested in classics. Our Delta Lambda chapter engages with these goals in a number of ways, including hosting presentations on a wide variety of classical topics and arranging trips to museums. Recent ΗΣΦ events include a student-faculty colloquium on Hesiod's Theogony and a public reading of all twenty-four books of Homer's Odyssey (the "Homerathon"). Members are also heavily involved in setting up and running Holy Cross' Classics Day for high school classics students.

Recommended Reading List of Works in Translation

In the spring of 2016 the members of Eta Sigma Phi established a recommended reading list of works in translation for its members. Each fall Eta Sigma Phi hosts a student-faculty colloquium about one of the works on the list. The selective list is included here, with hyperlinks to freely available translations of these texts.

Ancient Greek

Homer, Iliad, Odyssey
Hesiod, Theogony
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, Antigone
Euripides, Bacchae
Aeschylus, Oresteia Trilogy: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides
Aristophanes, Frogs
Herodotus, “Histories”: Solon Episode (1.28-56)
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War: Method (1.20-23), Funeral Oration of Pericles (2.35-46), The Plague (2.47-54), Mytilene Debate (3.37-50), Stasis at Corcyra (3.70-85), Melian Dialogue (5.84-5.113), Retreat from Sicily (7.72-87)
Plato, Symposium, Apology
Aristotle, Poetics
Theocritus, Idyll 1

Latin

Catullus, Poems: 1, 5, 7, 11, 51, 64, 76, 101
Caesar, Gallic War: Book I
Cicero, First Catilinarian, On Friendship
Sallust, Catiline’s War
Livy, The History of Rome: Preface, Book 1
Horace, Odes: 3.1-6
Vergil, Aeneid
Ovid, Metamorphoses: Books 1, 2, 10
Tacitus, Agricola, Annals I

Secondary Reading

“Ancient Greece” (Yale University Press, 2013) and “Ancient Rome” (Yale University Press, 2014), both by Thomas Martin (available as e-texts through Dinand Library)