Reading List for SS #21

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This is a first sketch.  If you read nothing else, you must read the Boethius text.  If you have questions or comments, you this post and subsequent posts on the same subject.

Reading List

Primary Texts

Augustine, Civitas Dei (City of God), especially Books I-III

Benedict, The Rule.  There are multiple print and online editions, and for those in a hurry, here is a truncated version:  https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/rul-benedict.asp

Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae (On the Consolation of Philosophy), available in various editions, new and used, and online in several places including:  

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14328/14328-h/14328-h.htm

Cassiodorus, Variae/Letters.  Hodgkins’ edition: selections

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18590/18590-h/18590-h.htm

 has a lengthy and useful (not required) introduction followed by a selection of letters.  Browse among them and we’ll eventually list a few for particular note.

Procopius, The Gothic War (History of the Wars, Books V-VII), available in Penguin paberback and online at:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20298/20298-h/20298-h.htm

Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, Book II, selections to be announced.  Gregory's breezy work is entertaining reading and gives excellent insights into what life must have been like under the Franks.

Gregory the Great,  Dialogues, especially the Life of Benedict.

https://archive.org/stream/DialoguesGregoryTheGreatPopeSt.5089/Dialogues%20-%20Gregory%20the%20Great%2C%20Pope%20St.%20%26%20_5089_djvu.txt

Venantius Fortunatus:  https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/venantius.html(in Latin).   VF was a voluminous poet and hymn-writer, some of whose hymns are a part of the Western Church's liturgical traditions:  "Pange lingua," "Vexilla regis prodeunt," and "Salve, festa dies" Englished as "Welcome Happy Morning."  His familiar poems to friends are filled with observations of everyday life made by a civilized man, educated in Ravenna, living among the Franks.

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Michael-Roberts-ebook/dp/B071ZHCN6B

I shall be posting on our website links and texts to bits and pieces of things, such as short poems by Latin and Greek authors

Secondary Texts

It is more important to do the primary reading, but for students looking for background, it is important to stay away from most of the popularizing literature on late antiquity.  Here are some books that can be recommended.

Browning, Robert.  Justinian and Theodora, widely available in new and used editions.

A useful but somewhat tendentious little volume is Averill Cameron's The Later Roman Empire

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Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina