HUM 2 Final Vocab

Empathy

Understanding another person’s perspective. Relevance: In HUM texts, empathy matters because authors often ask whether societies can understand outsiders, enemies, sinners, or foreign peoples.

Proem

A preface or introduction where an author explains the purpose of a work. Relevance: Sallust begins The Conspiracy of Catiline with a proem to frame Catiline as a case study in Rome’s moral and political decline.

Myth

A story of the past used to explain a people’s worldview, identity, or social role. Relevance: The Aeneid uses myth to explain Rome’s origins and values.

Declinism

The belief or bias that the past was better and the present/future shows decline. Relevance: Sallust presents Rome as falling from ancestral virtue into greed, corruption, and factionalism.

Senatus Consultum Ultimum

“The ultimate decree of the Senate,” an emergency decree giving consuls extreme authority to protect the Republic. Relevance: In Sallust, it empowers Cicero to crush Catiline’s conspiracy and raises questions about emergency power.

The Speech of Caesar

Caesar’s speech in Sallust 51 arguing for clemency toward Catiline’s conspirators. Relevance: It warns that harsh punishment could set a dangerous precedent and damage the Republic.

The Speech of Cato

Cato’s speech in Sallust 52 arguing for harsh punishment of Catiline’s conspirators. Relevance: It represents traditional Roman severity and the fear that leniency will encourage further rebellion.

Republic

A state where supreme power is held by the people and elected representatives. Relevance: Sallust’s Rome is a republic under stress from corruption, ambition, and political violence.

Factionalism

The division of a community into competing subgroups. Relevance: Sallust sees factionalism as a major cause of Rome’s decline, and Dante also shows factional conflict as socially destructive.

Augustus

Julius Caesar’s nephew, the first Roman emperor, who ended the civil wars and promoted moral reform. Relevance: The Aeneid was written under Augustus and often connects Aeneas’s mission to Augustan Rome.

Origo Gentis

An origin story of a people. Relevance: The Aeneid functions as an origo gentis by explaining the mythic origins of the Roman people.

Arma Virumque Cano

“My song is of war and a man,” the opening line of The Aeneid. Relevance: It presents the poem as both a war epic and a story about Aeneas’s role in founding Rome.

Pietas / Pious Aeneas

Piety means duty to gods, country, family, and fate over personal desire. Relevance: Aeneas is repeatedly called pious because he sacrifices private happiness for Rome’s future.

Pater Aeneas

“Father Aeneas,” a title presenting Aeneas as leader, founder, and symbolic father of the Roman people. Relevance: It emphasizes his public responsibility rather than just his personal identity.

Dido

The queen of Carthage and lover of Aeneas. Relevance: Her tragedy contrasts personal love with Aeneas’s public duty and complicates the image of Roman heroism.

“Yet I Wept for Dido”

A reference to Augustine’s emotional reaction to Dido’s suffering. Relevance: It shows how readers can feel pity for fictional suffering while questioning whether that pity is morally useful.

Exempla

Short examples or anecdotes used to demonstrate moral points. Relevance: Roman literature often uses characters and stories as models of virtue or vice.

Katabasis

A journey to the underworld. Relevance: Aeneas’s descent in Book 6 helps reveal Rome’s future, while Dante’s Inferno is also structured as an underworld journey.

Ekphrasis

A written description of a visual work of art. Relevance: In The Aeneid, Aeneas’s shield shows Rome’s future history and expands the poem’s political meaning.

“You, Roman, Remember”

Anchises’ command to future Romans about their mission to rule, impose peace, spare the conquered, and defeat the proud. Relevance: It defines Rome’s imperial identity and values.

Romulus’ Asylum

A refuge created by Romulus that gathered different peoples into one community. Relevance: It helps explain Rome as a mixed community built through incorporation.

Barbarian

A person considered non-Roman or outside Roman civilization. Relevance: The term reveals how Roman identity is defined against outsiders.

Turnus

Leader of the Italians against the Trojans, called a “second Achilles.” Relevance: His conflict with Aeneas raises questions about violence, founding, and whether Rome’s origins are morally clean.

Condere

Latin for “to found,” “establish,” or “build.” Relevance: The Aeneid is about the painful founding of Rome and the costs of creating a future civilization.

Synoptic

“Seen together,” referring to the Gospels that tell similar stories in different ways. Relevance: Luke is a synoptic Gospel because it shares material with Matthew and Mark while shaping it for its own audience.

Q Source

A hypothetical source of Jesus’s sayings used by Matthew and Luke. Relevance: It helps explain shared material across the synoptic Gospels.

Parables

Short fictional stories used by Jesus to teach moral or spiritual principles. Relevance: Luke uses parables to communicate ethical teachings in memorable, accessible form.

Theophilus

“Lover of God” or “dear to God,” the person addressed at the beginning of Luke and Acts. Relevance: Luke frames his writing as an orderly account for someone seeking deeper understanding of Christianity.

The Sermon on the Plain

One of Jesus’s first major teachings in Luke. Relevance: It gives concrete ethical commands and emphasizes concern for the poor, enemies, and outsiders.

“I Came to Bring Fire”

A saying of Jesus in Luke suggesting that his message will create division and transformation. Relevance: It complicates the idea that Christian community produces simple peace.

The Kingdom of God

God’s rule or activity on earth. Relevance: In Luke, Jesus’s teaching presents the Kingdom as both spiritual and socially transformative.

The Good Samaritan

A parable in Luke where a Samaritan shows mercy to a wounded man. Relevance: It challenges narrow definitions of neighbor and shows moral virtue in an outsider.

Universalism

The idea that all people can ultimately be saved or included in right relationship with God. Relevance: Luke and Acts present Christianity as expanding beyond Jews to include Gentiles.

The Way

The early Christian movement/community before Christianity became a separate mainstream religion. Relevance: Acts shows how The Way forms, spreads, and incorporates Gentiles.

Disciple

A follower of Christ. Relevance: In Luke and Acts, discipleship means leaving behind old attachments, serving others, and joining a new community.

Paul / Saul

Originally Saul, a persecutor of Christians who converts after a vision of Jesus. Relevance: Paul becomes central to spreading The Way beyond Judea to Gentile communities.

“What God Has Made Clean, You Must Not Call Profane”

God’s message to Peter in Acts before the conversion of Cornelius. Relevance: It signals that Gentiles can be accepted into the Christian community.

The Council of Jerusalem

A meeting in Acts deciding whether Gentile converts must follow Jewish law. Relevance: It confirms that Gentiles can join The Way without full conversion to Jewish ritual law.

The Unknown God

An altar Paul uses in Athens to preach about the Christian God. Relevance: Paul adapts his message to Greek culture, showing Acts’ flexible missionary strategy.

Areopagus

The public place in Athens where Paul gives his speech about the Unknown God. Relevance: It shows Christianity entering Greek intellectual and religious space.

Judea

A Roman province and the original geographic setting of Jesus’s followers. Relevance: Acts traces the movement of The Way outward from Judea to the wider Gentile world.

Nika Riot

A massive riot in Constantinople that became a revolt against Justinian. Relevance: In Procopius, it reveals the fragility of imperial power and Theodora’s political courage.

Tyrant

An illegitimate ruler who governs for self-interest rather than the community. Relevance: Procopius portrays Justinian as tyrannical in the Secret History.

Theodora

Justinian’s wife and empress of Rome. Relevance: Procopius attacks her background and character, while she also appears as politically capable and courageous.

Invective

A literary attack meant to publicly denigrate a person. Relevance: Procopius’s Secret History is invective against Justinian, Theodora, and the imperial court.

Romanía

The name Byzantines used for their own Roman state. Relevance: It shows that “Byzantines” understood themselves as Romans continuing the Roman Empire.

The Fourth Crusade

The crusade that resulted in the sack of Constantinople by Latin Christians. Relevance: It reveals conflict within Christianity and helps explain Byzantine anxieties about identity and betrayal.

Satire

A literary technique that criticizes or ridicules its target. Relevance: The Timarion uses satire to criticize Byzantine political, religious, intellectual, and medical culture.

Irony

Saying one thing while meaning another, often to expose contradiction. Relevance: The Timarion uses irony as part of its satirical criticism of Byzantine elites.

Orthodoxy

“Right belief” authorized by religious or political authority. Relevance: Byzantine rulers presented themselves as defenders of correct Christianity against heresy.

Bogomilism

A heretical movement persecuted by the Komnenos dynasty. Relevance: It shows how Byzantine authority defined itself through religious orthodoxy.

Sophists

Thinkers associated with persuasion and rhetoric rather than truth. Relevance: In satire, sophists can represent empty intellectual performance or corrupt learning.

John Mandeville

The authorial persona of The Book of Marvels and Travels. Relevance: The persona presents foreign peoples and places in ways that both reflect and challenge European assumptions.

Ethnography

The description or study of other societies’ customs. Relevance: Mandeville’s Travels describes foreign peoples to compare them with European Christian society.

The “Other”

The image constructed of people considered different from oneself. Relevance: Mandeville’s text often studies foreign peoples as “others,” sometimes critically and sometimes with surprising respect.

Chauvinism

The unreasonable belief in the superiority of one’s own group. Relevance: Mandeville often appears Christian/European chauvinist, but his text also questions European superiority.

Prester John

A mythical Christian king believed to rule a distant Christian kingdom among non-Christian peoples. Relevance: He represents ideal Christian kingship and the fantasy of a distant ally.

Utopia

A perfect or ideal society. Relevance: Mandeville’s descriptions of foreign societies sometimes function as critiques of Europe by imagining better alternatives.

Moral Relativity

The idea that values and practices should be understood within their own cultural context. Relevance: Mandeville sometimes judges foreign customs by their own social logic rather than European standards.

Moral Essentialism

The belief that some morals are inherently right or wrong regardless of culture. Relevance: Mandeville sometimes treats Christian moral standards as universally true.

Cynocephali

Dog-headed human-like peoples said to live at the edges of the world. Relevance: In Mandeville, they test how readers define humanity, monstrosity, and moral community.

Moschophoros

“The bearer of the calf,” an ancient image/statue of a man carrying a calf. Relevance: It can connect to ancient religious imagery and how visual culture communicates devotion or sacrifice.

Pantocrator

“Ruler of all,” a title/image of Christ as universal ruler. Relevance: It reflects Byzantine Christian authority and the religious framing of power.

Dante the Pilgrim

The character Dante creates as the narrator and traveler through the afterlife. Relevance: He is distinct from Dante the author and learns how to understand sin, justice, and salvation.

La Diritta Via

“The right path” in Italian. Relevance: At the start of Inferno, Dante has lost the right path, so the journey represents a movement from sin toward spiritual understanding.

Virgil

Dante’s guide through Hell and part of Purgatory. Relevance: He represents reason, classical wisdom, and the need for guidance, though he cannot lead Dante all the way to salvation.

Beatrice

Dante’s beloved who sends Virgil to guide him and later becomes his guide. Relevance: She represents divine love and grace beyond the limits of human reason.

“Abandon Every Hope”

The warning written over the gate of Hell. Relevance: It marks Hell as the place where the damned have lost the possibility of repentance and salvation.

Incontinence

Inability to control one’s desires or actions. Relevance: In Dante, sins like lust, gluttony, greed, and wrath come from desire overpowering reason.

Contrapasso

The principle that punishments in Hell fit or mirror the sins committed. Relevance: Dante’s punishments reveal the moral logic of each sin.

Indignance

Righteous or virtuous anger. Relevance: Dante’s anger toward Filippo Argenti is praised by Virgil, showing that not all anger is sinful.

Violence

Willful violation of the divine order. Relevance: In Dante, violence is punished below incontinence because it more deliberately attacks God, self, neighbor, or nature.

Fraud

The purposeful use of intellect to harm others. Relevance: Dante treats fraud as worse than incontinence and violence because it corrupts reason, a uniquely human gift.

Simple Fraud

Fraud committed against those with whom one has no special bond of trust. Relevance: In Dante, simple fraud is punished in Malebolge.

Malebolge

“Evil ditches,” the area of Hell where simple fraud is punished. Relevance: It contains sinners who used deception, manipulation, or false appearances to harm others.

Compound Fraud

Fraud committed against someone with a special bond of trust. Relevance: Dante treats this as worse than simple fraud because it betrays a relationship or obligation.

Treachery

The worst form of fraud, betrayal of special trust. Relevance: In Dante, treachery is punished in the lowest circle of Hell because it destroys the bonds holding society together.

Catharsis

An emotional release or purification, often produced through tragedy. Relevance: In classical literature, catharsis helps explain why watching suffering, pity, fear, or moral crisis can be meaningful for an audience rather than merely painful.