Project 7
Rosy-Fingered Dawn
Learning Goal: Read Greek and Latin prose and poetry within their larger cultural and historical settings
Literacy: Oral
This epithet encourages the reader to hone the story and narrows the perspective through time. This can signify multiple different events, but the ones chosen here are the journey/homecoming moments and significant moments in the plot that are both good and bad.
"Throughout the Odyssey, there are portions where time is largely skipped over within Odysseus’ flashbacks. Because it is telling a story that progresses over the course of multiple years, rosy-fingered Dawn urges the audience to situate themselves within a very narrow point of the story. This emphasizes the elements of the story leading up to and directly after the epithet much more than if the epithet had been omitted."
This assignment was a cumulative piece that we worked on for a large part of the semester. The presentation itself was on ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς, or rosy-fingered dawn, its presentation in The Odyssey, and whether it held any significance. I believe that this assignment was successful in that I used the information that I learned in class to make and improve my presentation. Through class, I was able to translate and understand the meter of the poem and use this to guide my work for the presentation. Pieces like this, cumulative works due at the end of the semester, made me feel like a Classics major the most.
While the fact that I am a Classics major seems obvious enough, the action of gathering copious amounts of information, sorting through it, and making everything coalesce into one paper is what makes me truly feel like I’m accomplishing something real. In addition to that, this paper in particular helped my conviction that I was on the right path because it was a paper that I completed for a language class. Before this, I had taken Elementary Greek and Intermediate Greek, and this was my first time extensively reading Greek that wasn’t from a textbook. If I could redo this item, I wouldn’t change much, but I would put more time and preparation into practicing the speech, so it goes more smoothly.