Index Cursus: Classical Mythology (CLCV3800; section 1004)
 

Last updated: August 11, 2026

Classics Program at BGSU Studies in Latin at BGSU Department of World Languages and Cultures Instagram: bgsu_languages Twitter: BGSU_Languages Facebook: BGSU Languages Bowling Green State University

James M. Pfundstein, Ph.D.
Shatzel 222
phone: 419-372-8278
e-mail: jmpfund@bgsu.edu
office hours: Tues. 12:30-1:20 or by appointment
web page: http://blogs.bgsu.edu/pfundblog/
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The Ovid translation you'll have to buy or get from a library. There are electronic versions if you prefer them. Make sure that what you get is Lombardo's translation; there are a million of them out there.

Ovid (Stanley Lombardo transl.) Metamorphoses (Hackett, 2010) (ISBN: 978-1603843072)

at Amazon

at Barnes & Noble

at BGSU Libraries 

Tatlock's book is a free e-text on stable sites, so you should have no trouble getting it. If you want to get hard copies, you may be able to find used copies from an online bookseller (e.g. Biblio or Alibris), but beware of hard copies with recent print dates. They're likely to be rotten "print on demand" editions of electronic versions that you can get for free.

Tatlock, Jessie M. Mythology of Greece and Rome (Century, 1917)

(online at Archive.org and elsewhere)

Online Resources:

Can't tell the players without a scorecard: here's a PDF handout I whomped up on the so-called 12 Olympians. (There are actually 14.)

What is standard manuscript formatting? For the purposes of this class, see the link below.

https://jamesenge.com/GenericMythArgument.wordformat.pdf

The Theoi Project is a copiously illustrated and scholarly guide to Greek mythology.

Encyclopedia: http://www.theoi.com/Encyc_A.html

Galleries: http://www.theoi.com/Galleries.html

Tufts University's Perseus Project: Texts, Translations, and also Images from the classical world; some medieval and Arabic material also.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/collections

https://www.maicar.com/GML/index.html

Here's a list of university resources and policies. I particularly recommend the resources.

https://jamesenge.com/BGSU.ResourcesAndPolicies.html

Course Expectations:

1. Expectations for Behavior: Abide by Wheaton's Law. For details, see the BGSU Codes of Conduct.

2. Expectations for Learning: This is a course taught primarily through lectures and readings. If there's one thing that modern pedagogy agrees on, it's that lectures are very bad, and make the angels weep, and promote global warming, and bring the heat death of the universe measurably closer. Okay. It's still the way I teach CLCV 3800, because the course surveys a great deal of material and people tend to assimilate it better if they get it in various media: written (in the texts), spoken (lectures and conversations), and visual (visual versions of Greek and Roman myth provided via slideshows--I have a lot of these, but they're not the kind with bulletpoints and lecture notes; I hate that).

Bottom line: read the texts; attend class for the slideshows & lectures; ask questions when in doubt or if you want more detail; complete the assignments (and don't cut corners on the ones that involve writing). You'll do well.

3. AI Use Guidelines

It shouldn't come up for this class (where all the gradable work consists of closed-book, in-class assignments). But I say anyway: don't use generative AI (i.e. chatbots) for the assignments in this class. Setting aside the fact that chatbots routinely violate intellectual property law and are ethically and environmentally unsustainable, the technology does not work as advertised. It cannot cite required sources accurately, for instance (unless it happens to be plagiarizing a source that does). These programs don't create writing based on knowledge; they generate text using statistical probabilities and a very large database, a process that has been described as "stochastic parroting". If you've ever seen a weird autocomplete on your phone, be aware that this is what AI does routinely. It's instantly obvious to anyone who reads carefully, which is one of the things you're paying me to do.

"Aha, Pfundstein!" you may say in the silent precincts of your heart, "how will you know, know for a fact that I used AI? If not, how can you ban it?"

As someone charged with your intellectual well-being and development, I urge you to avoid that brain-rot caused by these things. But as far as the course goes: I grade for elements that generative AI can’t provide (e.g. accurate and relevant citations of specific evidence)—not to exclude slop generated by chatbots, but because the ability to do that stuff is a sign of actual intelligence (which, despite the name on the label, AI doesn’t have).