From Homeric Greece to the Roman empire, relationships that revolve around the idea of mutual attraction between people (such as: happy or unrequited love, elegant flirting, jealousy, exemplary loyalty to one’s friends, cliquey networking…) formed a major part of social life and intellectual history.
The first half of this module addresses a range of Greek and Latin sources (for instance, Sappho, Plato, Ovid, Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe, visual art) that represent, or theorize about, erotic love between different sexes as well as between same-sex lovers.The second half of the module looks at non-erotic amicable commitments (“friendship”) through case studies in ancient society and philosophy; attention is paid to the anxiety about false friendship (flattery, parasitism).