Faculty Scholarship

Dr. James A. Arieti, Thompson Professor of Classics and Dr. Roger M. Barrus, Elliott Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs

THOMPSON PROFESSOR of Classics James A. Arieti (pictured standing) and Elliott Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs Roger M. Barrus (seated) completed a translation and commentary of Plato’s Gorgias (Focus Books, 2007). The dialogue, portraying a passionate, sarcastic, abrasive, ironic, combative Socrates, makes clear why Athens condemned him to death. The dialogue forces its readers to engage with the key questions of human life: Is the best life a public participation in one’s polity or a private life of reflection? Is happiness to be found in virtuous activity or in the maximizing of pleasures, power, and wealth? Is the art of rhetoric to persuade by good arguments or by manipulating emotions? The translation by Arieti and Barrus attempts to capture the puns, allusions, and various wordplays of the Greek, treating the dialogue no less as a work of great literature than of philosophy.

In addition to the translation of the Gorgias, their volume contains a full introduction that places the dialogue in its intellectual and historical context, an appendix that provides the literal translations of a number of speeches in Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars that reflect themes of the Platonic work, appendices on the dialogue’s lessons about dialectic and about the words mythos and logos, a glossary of key terms, and an index.

Arieti and Barrus are currently working on a translation, with commentary and introductory essays, of Plato’s dialogue Protagoras, a raucous philosophical drama that lampoons philosophy, literary criticism, and politics.

In addition to the collaborative work with Barrus, Arieti has given several lectures—“The Choice of Achilles,” the inaugural lecture in the newly endowed series of annual McKibben Lectures at his alma mater, Grinnell College, in March 2006, and at the biannual meeting of the Classical Association of Virginia in May 2006; a Convocation Lecture at St. Johns College in Annapolis in October 2006; and the keynote lecture, “Spoils at War,” at a symposium of three universities in New Hampshire (the University of New Hampshire, Plymouth State University, and Keen State University) in February 2007. Also, in conjunction with the New Hampshire symposium, he served as panelist in a discussion of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Euripides’ Trojan Women, and Sophocles’ Electra.

At the College last spring, he gave what he called a “non-lecture lecture,” in which he compared the film 300 with the classic restraint modeled in Simonides’ epigram on the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae.

Barrus and Elliott Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs John H. Eastby participated as representatives of Hampden-Sydney in organizing and conducting the annual conference of the Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC), which was held in Williamsburg, Virginia, in March 2007. They are the editors of the conference proceedings, which are to be completed in 2008.

Barrus presented a paper on “Philosophical Spelunking: The Image of the Cave in Plato’s Republic and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer” at the 2006 annual conference of ACTC. He also presented a paper on “James Madison and the Revolutions of 1776”— analyzing the connection between the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the economic theory of Smith’s Wealth of Nations in the American Constitution—at the 2007 ACTC annual conference.

For the Liberty Fund, Barrus organized and directed a conference on “Aristophanes and Freedom and Democracy” in Safety Harbor, Florida, in January 2006, and a conference on “Higher Education in Liberal Democracy: Educating for Freedom and Virtue” in Big Sky, Montana, in August 2007. He also served as discussion leader in a Liberty Fund conference on “War and Morality” in Cincinnati, Ohio, in September 2006.

In the fall Barrus completed two essays on Mormonism and American politics for separate volumes on Mormonism.

In addition to his bachelor’s degree from Grinnell, Arieti, who came to Hampden-Sydney in 1978 and was promoted to full professor in 1988, holds the master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. Barrus received his B.A. from Michigan State University, and his M.A and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has been teaching at the College since 1982, with his promotion to the rank of professor coming in 1995. Eastby began teaching at the College in 1989 and was promoted to the rank of professor in 2000. His bachelor’s degree is from Augustana College, and his master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

BEYOND THE Classroom FOR THE Classroom
Hampden-Sydney College Faculty Scholarship 2005-2008
A report by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty