*PROMPT/QUESTIONS TO ANSWER* : What kinds of knowledge does Cicero think are needed for political leadership in Rome? Does he prefer theoretical or practical knowledge? Why? How does he think people with the wrong kind of knowledge will govern? What does he think the ideal statesman should look like? Are his ideas self-serving? How do his recommendations line up with the characteristics of actual political leaders in Rome during the first century?
Directions given to me:
The second paper (750 words) is intended to be very much like the first. The one difference is that you need not restrict yourself to discussion of as narrow a portion of the text as I required in the first paper (though you are welcome and encouraged to do so). On the first paper, I was trying to force you to engage in close reading of the text by trying to restrict you to discussion of a single sentence or paragraph. Although I still want you to be engaged in close discussion of the text and that close discussion should be the focus of your paper, you may range over as much of the text as is necessary, but the smaller the segment of the text you focus on, the better your paper is likely to be. Do not attempt to write about the whole work and make sure that your paper extensively engages in the close reading of a small portion of the text. Detailed discussion of evidence is essential. For those of you who, against instructions, did range over the whole text for the first paper, you should strongly consider trying to examine only a tiny portion of it this time to get practice in the close reading of evidence. In general, the narrower your textual focus, the better the paper, for you can take into account more of the evidence, both evidence that neatly fits your argument and—just as important—evidence that doesn’t.
There is a further reason for requiring that you constantly engage closely with detailed reading and analysis of the text beyond the conviction that this is the best way for you to learn how to improve your abilities of analysis and writing. That reason is ChatGPT. In its current form, ChatGPT does not engage in close analysis of evidence from the text. A paper that fails to quote evidence from the text repeatedly and then discuss the material it has quoted may well look like a paper that is plagiarized by using ChatGPT (or some other AI). Papers that follow the instructions are unlikely to arouse suspicion. Papers that do not follow the instructions to engage in extensive close reading of the text may simply be returned for rewriting.
Your paper should consider one or more texts on the syllabus (generally from the same period). You may discuss any of the ancient and medieval texts on the syllabus from 9 Feb. through the due date (other than the Sermon on the Mount: you may not write on the Bible), that is, from the period of Greek tyranny through early monasticism. Although your knowledge of the period and your thinking about it may be influenced by what you have read in the textbook or by what you have heard during class itself, simply repeating what you have learned there adds little or nothing and is not the most productive use of your time and efforts. The paper is absolutely not intended as a research paper, and repeating what books in the library (or, even worse, webpages of dubious merit) have had to say about the texts you are discussing is of little value. Please re-read that last sentence: Many of you, in the first paper, went and did research and reported on that, rather than wrote on ancient texts. I am interested in seeing how you go about closely reading ancient and medieval texts and constructing an argument about them on the basis of evidence from the ancient texts themselves while remaining attentive to the particularities of the time and place where the work was written. That you can find stuff on the web does not impressive me; that you can think creatively about the texts themselves does. The material that you have from a primary text (that is, an ancient or medieval source), from your textbook and the material covered in class is more than enough to do this. For texts from which you have read only extracts, you may want to read more of the text, and the URLs on the syllabus can, in most instances, direct you to the full work.
The only outside source that you may need is a reference work to provide dates for any individuals such as the author of the text you are discussing. Do not simply copy dates from the syllabus or Course Packet; instead, look them up in a reference work. Using Wikipedia is fine for dates; other suggested references: The Oxford Classical Dictionary or The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (both are in the library and should also be online as part of Oxford Reference Works). If you use a source for dates, you must cite your source, just as you would any time you rely on a source for your facts, words and ideas (see the online Paper Example for further explanation). Your focus should be on closely reading primary sources, seeing what can be gleaned from them about the questions you are asking. Do not do research; do not use Chat GPT.
Every paper needs to begin with a thesis, which you are trying to explore or prove. A thesis is an argument, a controversial position with which your reader might disagree and that you seek to explore, elaborate, refine and qualify on the basis of a discussion of relevant textual evidence. If there is no argument made consistently throughout the paper with which a reader might potentially disagree, then you are simply meandering or writing a paper so innocuous as to be uninteresting. If you are unable to devise a brief title that indicates something about the nature of the argument of the paper (and use of the title of the work under discussion as your own title does not fulfill this function), then it is likely that your paper has no argument. In the first paper, a great many of you failed to articulate a clear thesis. To counter this problem, you may find it useful to have the word problem or question near the end of your first paragraph to help draw attention to the argument you are making, giving both you and your reader something to look back to throughout the paper to see how the material you are discussing relates to that specific problem or question. If something you say does not help explore, prove or complicate your argument, then you are digressing. Ignore bright, shiny objects found off your path. General introductory material is irrelevant and distracting unless it directly contributes to exploring and proving your argument and should be kept to a minimum. Within your first few sentences, you need to state your thesis, give the author and title of the work you are discussing, the dates for the author and the work and the sources for both these dates. Look again at the online Paper Example (Blackboard > Syllabus & Vital Documents) for an example of how to do this.
Your essay should be around 750 words long, double-spaced, with one-inch margins on numbered pages. Rather than typing the paper directly in the text-box (which disables me from making comments), papers should be submitted as attachments in MS Word (try to avoid submitting a pdf-file; it is extremely difficult to add comments to pdf-files). If you have Apple Pages, use the Export function in the program to convert the file into MS Word format. Do not send me to some website (such as Google Docs or Sharepoint) for me to retrieve your paper there. I won’t. It is up to you to submit a paper in a format that I can read, not up to me to figure out how to read whatever you submit. Please re-read my comments on your first paper for further remarks about formatting and bibliography and to make sure that your paper takes into account the comments I have given you—I hate having to repeat myself and am not especially sympathetic toward papers that fail to take into account the comments I have already made to help you improve your work (this is especially the case with comments about the mechanics of your paper, like citing material properly, providing an informative title, giving dates for individuals, citing the source of your dates, and so on). Please re-read, as well, the pointers for the Documentary Exercise in the online Paper Example, for these also apply here. Your paper must have an informative title, something that gives an indication about your thesis (not simply the title of the work you’re writing about: not, for instance, “An Analysis of Gregory of Tours’ History of the Franks,” but “The Relationship between the Bishops and Merovingian Kings in Gregory of Tours”). When submitting your paper, download, fill out and submit the Paper Checklist (< Syll. & Vital Documents; simply add it at the end of your paper). Proofread your paper before submitting it; do not rely on your word processor’s spell-check.
Every time you borrow the facts, words or ideas of someone else, you must acknowledge your intellectual indebtedness in a note, precisely specifying where the information comes from so your reader can trace your indebtedness and discern what material is yours from what is not. For instance, the first occasion that you mention an individual, a work or an event, give the date for it and give a parenthetical note crediting the source of that date: “When Columbus (c. 1451-1506; Wikipedia) discovered America in 1492 (Cole, 335-36), he was expecting instead to find a route to India.” If you quote or even paraphrase something that happens in a work, give a reference for it: You are in a much better position than your reader to track your indebtedness and help your reader find the material you are discussing. Re-read the section on the syllabus about academic integrity, along with the links given there: You do not want to find yourself in the predicament of the recent president of Hungary (http://tinyurl.com/7ms566x/), the defense minister of Germany (https://tinyurl.com/mvufysb6/) or the senator from Montana (https://tinyurl.com/ 56bea64b/), all of whose careers were destroyed by instances of plagiarism that were discovered years later. In noting your indebtedness, you must follow Chicago format. Details for how to annotate in Chicago format may be found in the online Paper Example; in the handout, “On Citation” (both on Blackboard > Syllabus & Vital Documents); at the library’s website (http:// library.sacredheart.edu/home > Research Support > Citation Guides); and at the following URL: https://tinyurl.com/yc2kxjtc . If the work you are writing about has section numbers of some kind, or book and chapter numbers, use them rather than page numbers to cite the work: Such numbers are standard across all editions and make it much easier to find the precise passage you mean. Telling me the page number in the Course Packet is far less helpful than giving the section number. Since you are discussing a text, your paper will need at least two bibliographic references, namely, to the edition of the work you are using and your source for the dates of the author and work.
If you are using the Course Packet, you cannot simply copy the bibliographic reference given there for the work you are discussing, for that is not where you read the work; you read it in the CP, and your Bibliography must indicate that. Look at p. 2 of the Table of Contents of the CP for instructions on how to cite material from the CP and follow those instructions exactly, changing all the material that needs to be changed (author, title, translator, page numbers). There really is no excuse for messing up a bibliographic reference from the CP. Those of you who did so, simply were not following the instructions—and they are not difficult to follow if you actually slow down and read them.
Three further miscellaneous cautions. First, although you may be interested in how the argument you make is related to the modern world, historians are, in the first instance, interested in investigating and understanding earlier periods, reconstructing what happened, why these things happened, how they were understood by their contemporaries, what repercussions these things had in their immediate aftermath. In other words, the focus of your paper should not be on recommending what we ought to do, or in criticizing ancient people for what they did, but understanding what past peoples did and why. So, in a paper as short as this, don’t talk about us; talk about them. If you have any confusion about this, re-read Lynn Hunt’s “Against Presentism” (which was assigned for the first session of the class). Second, beware of sounding like you are crediting the pagan gods, demons or the Christian God with agency: not “the devil tormented Antony,” but “Athanasius says the devil tormented Antony” or “Athanasius believes that Antony suffered from demonic torment.” Historians look to human causes to explain human actions, not to supernatural causes. Third, you are writing about a particular time and place, not the whole of ancient Greece or the whole of the Middle Ages. Make sure your conclusions are closely tailored to your evidence and not stretched to fit times and places for which you have discussed no evidence. Avoid overgeneralization.
Your paper must be submitted with a filled-out copy of the Paper Checklist (Blackboard > Syllabus & Vital Documents).