Session 4

The political vision of the Prometheus-Intellectual in N. Vrettakos’ Prometheus or the Game of a Day

Vasilis Arapis (University of Patras)

Intense debate often arises in public discourse concerning the societal role of the intellectual or the artist. The concept of the intellectual is inherently complex and multifaceted, continually reshaped in accordance with prevailing socio-political conditions. The Greek poet Nikiforos Vrettakos (1912-1991) uses the Promethean mythical background in Prometheus or The Game of a Day (1978), but he is not bound by the archetypes of a traditional Promethean narrative, presenting instead a philanthropic Prometheus who is dedicated to the improvement of the human world. The role of Prometheus as an intellectual, as it emerges in Vrettakos’ work, belongs to the type of the independent intellectual, characterized by a nonconformist stance and by the preservation of a revolutionary spirit through voluntary isolation. The suffering that Prometheus undergoes stems from his uncompromising nature and, above all, from his acute consciousness of his social mission, which aspires to mold human awareness towards the realization of a free society. Vrettakos endeavors to communicate a distinctly social message, grounded in his belief that social change will inevitably occur in due course.

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The Myth of Mustard Gas: David Jones and the Mythic Deposit

Olivia Cowley (Harvard University)

The Myth of Mustard Gas: David Jones and the Mythic DepositThe poet and painter David Jones spent close to 117 weeks on the Western Front of the First World War. This experience would lead to his long-form modernist poems, In Parenthesis (1937) and The Anathemata (1952).In these poems, Jones is theorizing and enacting what he would refer to as the ‘mythic deposit’ of Western culture. This paper argues that we can think of this ‘deposit’ as something closer to a mineral deposit, than a financial one. Jones’ long form poems treat the classical past and mythology as a kind of sediment, or silt, moving and articulating beneath creation, even, at times, collapsing into itself.In Parenthesis and The Anathemata collapse the ditties and commands of the trenches, the names of mortar shells, the Trojan War, ancient Greek maritime history. They collapse the sinew between ‘thauma’ and ‘trauma’. Unlike Thucydides, for Jones myth was not the enemy of truth. Myth was another kind of truth, another comparative order— one which might reveal our current order to also be ‘another’, to be a choice or negotiable.

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Lycaon’s Death in Alice Oswald’s Memorial

Zoe Kalamara (Democritus University of Thrace)

In her poem Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad (2011), Alice Oswald presents her own version of the Iliad. Oswald rejects the epic poet’s focus on Achilles and his anger in favor of a poem that revolves around the characters that die in the course of the Iliad. So far, and despite her innovative approach, the relations between her poetry and the reception of epic tradition remain underexplored within scholarly circles, warranting a deeper examination of her work. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Oswald approaches the death of Priam’s and Laothoe’s son, Lycaon, who dies during the massacre in Scamander (Iliad 21). Building on previous scholarship, my goal is to explore how Oswald uses Homeric techniques – biographical vignettes, similes, apostrophe, direct address– in order to present Lycaon’s story in a way that allows her to shift the focus from Achilles’ revenge to the grief experienced by the victim’s mother. This paper aims to offer a fresh perspective on the themes of grief, loss, and remembrance within the context of epic storytelling, in order to contribute to the appreciation of Oswald’s work but also broaden our understanding of how classical narratives are reinterpreted in modern literary discourse.

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A Periodic Table for Greek Mythology: Rewriting the landscape for working class contributors

Miri Teixeira (Working Classicists)

Publication is harder for working class writers. We only need look at the names on the spines of popular Classics texts to see the correlation between private schools, Oxbridge and publishing. Simply, writers from the working class are less likely to have the network and connections to allow their words to find an audience. It is no longer enough to say that access to publication is open to anyone who would step forward, because working class writers are less likely to do so. Instead, publishers must be active in approaching writers from disadvantaged backgrounds, and then providing the platform from which they can write. It is therefore necessary to be active in providing opportunity, and not simply providing a “safety net” and hoping for the best. Institutions must understand the experience of working class Classicists in full, that they might better help them to equity in publishing. 2024 has seen the publication of Working Classicists’ Periodic Table of Greek Mythology, a text which has put the working class experience at its centre, showing that there are ways in which publishers of articles, journals and books can strive to achieve equity for working class writers, as this presentation will show.

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Spatio disiuncti non cordibus: improving access to Classics for geographically remote teachers and learners

Jordan Lynch (Thurso High School)

How would you begin a Classics department if you were 150 miles from the nearest colleague in the subject? How would you moderate teaching and assessment standards without the input of a subject specialist? How would you get over your sense of inferiority if you didn’t have a hinterland in Classics to draw upon? It is difficult to get Classics into state schools at the best of times, but it is harder still if the teacher and school in question are geographically remote. School teachers offering Classical Studies in remote locations are made to jump through logistical hoops which colleagues in more central areas are not. Development events are always based in the central belt; the network of Classics teachers is central; opportunities to share resources are less accessible. New teachers already face the difficulties involved in getting to grips with courses, new assessments and new content, but when combined with a general sense of exclusion from the larger group, it becomes an incredibly isolating experience. This paper will show that with greater imagination, access to Classics in remote places can be improved, and in so doing the seeds of a new generation of teachers may be brought to flourish.

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Ancient Voices: Modern Relevance

Samantha Newington (University of Aberdeen), Alex Imrie (University of Edinburgh)

In 2019, the Classical Association of Scotland launched a languages summer school in Edinburgh. Plans to expand this ‘bricks-and-mortar’ offering, however, would be shelved owing to COVID-19. Throughout 2020, CAS offered a variety of free seminars online, covering ancient languages and other classical topics. In offering these sessions, CAS discovered both a domestic audience keen to learn more, and communities of learners in all corners of the globe for whom access to Classics often proved difficult or impractical. In 2021, CAS proudly launched its newly re-branded ‘Ancient Voices’ programme as an entirely online venture.This paper will discuss the inspirations which led to the creation of Ancient Voices as a programme which aims to open the world of Classics and Classical Studies to all, promoting an inclusive learning environment and welcoming community of scholars, teachers and enthusiasts. From the outset, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion have been guiding principles, at both the programme design and delivery stages. This paper thus considers not only the architecture of Ancient Voices as a learning initiative, but also examines its present position within broader sector considerations, especially (but not limited to) the apparent trend in returning to in-person settings following the removal of COVID restrictions.

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Beyond half-measures: class as an accessibility requirement in Classics

George Connor (Working Classicists)

Getting into university to study Classics is harder for working class pupils. Life at university is harder for working class students. Progress post-degree is harder for working class graduates. Without recognising class as a potential barrier to equity in Classics, there can be no real change. When a state school candidate reaches academia, they are assaulted by barriers, and financial disadvantage is only the starting point: social codes, previous experience, access to required support, institutional snobbery and the balance of working while studying, all factor into making the university experience harder for working class students. This disadvantage continues on for the lucky few who graduate in Classics having come from a working-class background. Publishing, conferences (attending and presenting), employment and simply finding comfort in their own skin are all further hurdles to be navigated, often without specific institutional support. This presentation proposes that the only way we can hope to remove these barriers for future generations is by fully acknowledging and addressing class as an accessibility requirement in practical terms. The discipline can and should diversify its voices, and remove the stale air of privilege which has for so long rendered it a study only for the affluent or wealthy.

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The Convergence of the Sphinx: How Art & Literature Got On the Same Page

Aidan Gray (University of Cambridge)

Something very odd happens with the Sphinx between the archaic and classical periods. Initially, the Sphinx as featured in art and the Sphinx as described in literature are quite dissimilar. They do not cohere. But in the fifth century, the two Sphinxes seem to become one. The Sphinx is associated at first with sacred spaces and with mourning from the end of the Mycenaean period. The earliest narrative references make it a cannibal and a destroyer. Its role in the temple transforms the Sphinx into an unnoticed observer of painted scenes, existing outside the ‘narrative’. In the sixth century, the myth of Oedipus suddenly appears in art, where it sits alongside more generic scenes of violence. In the fifth century, all of these strands come into conversation with each other. The encounter with Oedipus becomes popular, and this endows the Sphinx in its liminal contexts with the suggestion of intelligence and even artistic capability. This intentional ‘convergence’ of the Sphinx allows us to examine a privileged locus of dialogue between the worlds of art and literature in fifth-century Athenian society.

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Animal-Human and Animal-Divine Interactions on the ancient Athenian Acropolis.

Peter Liddel (University of Manchester)

Animal-Human and Animal-Divine Interactions on the ancient Athenian Acropolis.Recent scholarship has explored human-animal interaction in the urban environment and sacred places of ancient Greek city-states. A divine presence pervades human-animal relations in the context of the Athenian acropolis in terms of (a) realities and (b) representation. Animals were present on the acropolis under human custody as sacrificial offerings, in ritual activity, and as draught animals in the construction of sacred buildings. Wild animals would independently have flourished around and upon a hill not then denuded of its topsoil; they were sometimes embraced as part of the sacred environment or as sacred to particular deities. However, there were restrictions on the entry of certain animals to the Athenian acropolis, including dogs, crows and goats.Representations of animals were widespread in the iconography of monumental and free-standing marble sculpture, paintings and terracotta and bronze dedications; they are attested in the inscribed treasure-records of Athena set up on the acropolis; and animals, especially chthonic ones, were prominent in acropolis-based myths.This paper argues that interactions between both animals and humans, and also animals and deities, contributed to the construction of sensory landscapes and mythological narratives of sacred space on the Athenian acropolis.

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‘ἐς τὰ μέγαρα καλούμενα ἀφιᾶσιν ὗς τῶν νεογνῶν’ Understanding Gender Roles in Antiquity through Animal Osteoarchaeology

Elizabeth Weinberg (University of St Andrews)

Recent advances in bioarchaeological methods have allowed archaeologists to revisit osteoarchaeological material from numerous urban settlements and sanctuaries in Greek-colonised Sicily. While analysis of human remains has shed light on health and dietary differences between the sexes within populations, that of animal remains within domestic and sanctuary contexts can illustrate relationships between animal husbandry and ritual sacrifice for feasting. Cross referencing this data in sanctuaries used exclusively or primarily by women in suggests that ritual feasting was a rare opportunity for women to consume animal meat, greatly impacting their experience of these rituals and, therefore, cognitive memory.The extra-urban sanctuary of S. Anna in Agrigento, often attributed to Demeter and Kore or Chthonic Deities, contained depositional pits with large numbers of burnt piglet bones along with objects associated with women such as female figurines and tools for weaving. While scholars have previously asserted that women’s roles in religious rituals were merely ‘passive’ or served the male poleis, this paper will use the sanctuary at S. Anna as a case study to illustrate how osteoarchaeology within sanctuary and domestic contexts can be used to understand gender roles and cultural memory in creating heritage.

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On Hares: Regional Variation and Performative Masculinity in the Archaic and Early Classical Aegean

James Whitley (British School at Athens)

In Xenophon’s Anabasis there is much hunting of hares. Hunting hares (with nets, with dogs) clearly relates to performative masculinity, yet the regional and temporal variation in this practice have been little explored. Iconographic and zooarchaeological evidence for such variation easily outweighs the literary. Scenes of hunting hares with dogs begin to occur on Protocorinthian perfume flasks and pouring vessels from about 670 BC onwards. Dead and hunted hares also occur as part of the repertory of Rhodian alabastra. Their significance on Athenian black figure seems quite different; here hares are used as love gifts (the Amasis painter). In Crete hares are also represented on some of the bronze plaques from the shrine of Hermes and Aphrodite at Kato Symi in Crete; here gifts of hunted animals exchanged between older and younger men may represent a bonding ritual. Recent archaeological and zoo-archaeological investigation of three major Cretan centres of Archaic to Hellenistic date (Dreros, Azoria, Praisos) has revealed numerous hare bones in deposits associated with the Cretan andreion. These variations raise the question whether we should therefore talk about one or several ancient ‘ontologies’ (in Descola’s sense) in ancient Greece.

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Herculanean Fragments on Aristotle’s Katharsis: a joint between ‘clarification’ and ‘habituation’?

John Anderson (University of Texas at Austin)

Aristotle’s concept of dramatic katharsis is equally frustrating, tantalising, and controversial because of the meagreness of our evidence. Interpretations hinge on one (Poetics I. 6. 1449b25–8) or two (Politics VIII. 7. 1341b36-41) passages depending on their perceived mutual relevance. In this situation not enough attention has been given to the Herculanean papyri editors have argued record Aristotle’s discourse on the concept from the lost dialogue, On Poets (PHerc. 1581). Two of these fragments (F46, F47 Janko 2011) are especially consequential in evaluating the viability of existing interpretative frameworks and suggesting a more persuasive resolution. Heath’s assessment of the fragments as “desperately incoherent” (2013, pg. 14) proves the additional evidence is incompatible with certain understandings of katharsis. At the same time by eliminating these options they give the most authority to the two approaches of Intellectualist and Habituation (per Halliwell 2009) which accommodate the findings. Developing on recent scholarship on the relationship between the emotions, character-virtues, and practical-intelligence (e.g. Rapp 2009; Pearson 2007), I propose how all of our total evidence and these two more compelling readings of katharsis can be reconciled. Katharsis combines ‘clarification’ and ‘habituation’ as its end explained by φρόνησις’ mediation between theoretical-wisdom and the character-virtues.

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Homonymously Human: Aristotle’s Brutish Character in his Ethics

Audrey Anton (Western Kentucky University)

“Homonymously Human: Aristotle’s Brutish Character in his Ethics”According to Aristotle, brutishness (θηριότης) is opposed to a godlike character, which Aristotle says is “more than human” (EN 1145a23). Is the brutish character, therefore, less than human? This paper argues that the brutish character must be understood as sub-human within Aristotle’s philosophical framework. According to Aristotle’s function argument, a being’s essence is determined by its function (Cat. V 2b3016; Pol. 1253a19-25). The function of the human being lies in its capacity to reason (EN 1098a6, 1178a8; EE 1219b40-1220a1). However, the brutish lack reason altogether (AE 1150a1-2). While Aristotle typically employs the notion of privation to describe dysfunctional beings, he cannot resort to such explanation in the case of the brutish. A privation is a lack of an ability members of a species typically possess (Meta. 1022b25, Cat. 11b15). Since the brutish completely lack reason (the defining characteristic of humanity), they cannot be classified as merely “deprived” humans, as this would create a contradiction (a non-human human). Instead, the brutish must be classified as only homonymously human—beings that appear human but lack humanity’s essential nature. This classification reveals that brutishness represents a type of animal without a proper classification in Aristotle’s taxonomy.

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Doing things with Aristotle: Reading Politics with performativity

Tim McConnell (University of Leeds)

Aristotle defines politai by their capacity to act politically in the polis. This is a fundamentally performative understanding (Duplouy 2019, Vlassopoulos 2007). This paper pursues this line of analysis in Politics, discussing the passage on his definition, but also the less thoroughly discussed parts of Book IV and V, as examples of performativity. Aristotle answers some key questions that a performative analysis of the category of citizenship asks: what does the status of citizenship empower its possessor to “do” with words, and under what conditions are these performances accepted or rejected. Aristotle gives us details about the more technocratic and legalistic aspects of Polis governance. Aristotle’s discussion of these procedures can be understood with speech act theory because citizens act with words to impact their shared world by witnessing, holding to account, and through different forms of participation in discussion. This paper uses these examples to bring out Aristotle’s speech act theory. This reading can resolve some old contradictions in Aristotle’s definition of polites about the so-called “passive citizens” (Mossé 1979, Keyt 1993). This performative reading enables comparisons between Aristotle’s model of citizenship and those that emerge from epigraphy and oratory. The aim is an historicization of Aristotle’s political theories.

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Tragic pleasure, or pain under the Pleasure Principle: Reading three cases of play in Freud with Aristotle

Jiawen Wang (University of Chicago)

This paper examines how Freudian psychoanalysis treats pain and pleasure through three cases of play: children’s play, clinical transference, and dramatic performance. Drawing on texts such as Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Jokes and the Unconscious (1905), and Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming (1908), it argues that Freud’s idea of transforming pain into aesthetic pleasure aligns with ancient Greek notions of “tragic pleasure,” particularly in Aristotle’s Poetics and Plato’s Laws, which Freud consciously echoes.The paper has three aims: to trace parallels between Freud and Aristotle, to explore Freud’s engagement with Aristotle through archival research, and to explain key differences in their theoretical frameworks. Both thinkers view play as essential and transformative, but Freud locates pleasure in emotional release, while Aristotle grounds it in cognitive understanding and mimetic representation. Freudian tragic enjoyment, unlike Aristotelian intellectual identification with the tragic hero’s hamartia, is preconditioned on audience’s illusion and signifies their unconscious regression to primary narcissism.Ultimately, Freud expands the classical scope of tragic pleasure by including intense affects like horror, which Aristotle excludes. This analysis reveals how Freudian psychoanalysis both draws from and reconfigures classical traditions, offering a modern reinterpretation of pleasure in pain through the lens of play and tragedy.

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Dionysiac Experience in Elaine de Kooning’s Bacchus Series

Julia Higgins (University of Bristol)

In Elaine de Kooning’s Bacchus paintings, the artist’s abstract style dynamically depicts the Dionysiac thiasos. Dionysiac experience in myth and cult is frequently discussed for its emphasis on liminality, and ancient artists frequently employ a distinct representational mode when concerned with Dionysiac transformation, effectively depicting the teetering ambiguity of Dionysiac experience.The series is both a response to a nineteenth-century bronze sculpture, Le Triomphe de Silène, and itself an iterative series, each new work produced and viewed in response to the last. The paintings are overwrought with metamorphosis in both theme and form, and reading de Kooning’s abstracted forms through the lens of liminal Dionysiac transformation therefore reveals a layered expression of the annihilation of boundaries between internal figures, object and subject, artist and viewer.In this paper I explore how de Kooning’s Abstract Expressionist style visually expresses the liminal, universalising process of Dionysiac experience while enacting it for the viewer through its iterative format and representation of transformation. By examining the canvases through established approaches to ancient images of transformation, I explore how de Kooning models transient, subjective experience for her viewers, thereby playing out the process of transformative Dionysiac experience.

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Orpheus on Broadway: Hadestown (2019) and Young Audiences

Ffion Smith (UCL)

Greco-Roman musicals, commercial stage musicals which play with characters and stories from the ancient world, have a long history on Broadway and the West End. However, we currently live in an exciting time for the Greco-Roman musical, with Hadestown (2019), The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (2019) and Disney’s upcoming Hercules all playing in London in 2025. Strikingly, these Greco-Roman musicals appeal to children and young people, a major audience for musical theatre today. This paper interrogates young audiences’ relationship with Greco-Roman musicals through exploration of Anais Mitchell’s hit 2019 Orpheus musical Hadestown, which has fostered a passionate young fanbase. Hadestown places the Orpheus myth within a dystopian American landscape where inequality is rife. It is known for its commitment to diversity, being performed by a representative cast who use their own accents while in character. This paper explores how Hadestown’s representative casting ruptures ideas of the perceived elitism of Classics and frames iconic mythic characters as figures who speak for, and to, young people today. It will use an interdisciplinary methodology which combines Classical reception techniques with practical musical analysis to explore the musical numbers in Hadestown, questioning how they represent Orpheus as a symbol of youthful rebellion.

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“I changed into goddesses, villains, and fools” : Classical reference, Norse mythology, and allusion to rebirth in Taylor Swift’s ‘The Era’s Tour 2023-2024’.

Katherine Halcrow (University of Oxford)

Between 2023 and 2024 , musician Taylor Swift performed the “The Eras Tour” which celebrated her robust oeuvre. On the surface, Swift’s tour may appear routine, but a deeper look at published lyrics, poetic allusion, ekphrasis, and visual connection suggests otherwise. Swift incorporates two primary classical elements in her work: Aristotelian ideas and ancient mythology. I hypothesize that Swift incorporates elements of Greek and Roman mythology, and then combines them with Norse mythology, evidenced by the structure and arrangement of the show itself. Here, I argue that one reading of Swift’s “Era’s Tour” revolves around a female-focused rebirth saga, based on the archetype of classical Aphrodite/Venus and the Norse mythological apocalypse, Ragnarök. While most current academic discussions of Swift centre on her business acumen, this work examines the artist’s underlying allusion to ancient saga. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is threefold: 1) to look deeper at the classical reception within Swift’s global tour 2) to examine these allusions within an appropriate space given the level of specialist knowledge which aids in embracing the depth of references 3) to address potential challenges that come with teaching interdisciplinary topics found in her work (reception, art history, folklore) within a classroom setting.

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Is classics classist?

Lucy Eyre

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Valuable bodies: animal and human corpses in ancient Rome

Jonathan Steward (University of Cambridge)

The Romans value human corpses differently based on several factors: wealth, status, moral standing, affection, and more. Some bodies are valued more than others and are treated better as a result. Human corpses, however, are not the only valued and valuable bodies: on several occasions, the pets of the wealthy are grieved, mourned, and commemorated in the literature, art, and epigraphy of the late Republic and early Empire. Much has been written on the poetics of the bird consolationes of Ovid and Statius; this paper takes a more interdisciplinary, embodied approach, beyond pure literature, focusing on the depiction and treatment of the bodies of the animals themselves across different media and its relation to the depiction and treatment of human corpses. In poetry, pets’ bodies are mourned and prepared in similar ways to human bodies; in funerary art, they are often depicted beside the deceased, on sarcophagi reliefs, gravestones, and kline monuments; in epigraphy, there are several examples of affectionate sepulchral inscriptions for dead pets. Through comparing the presentation of ‘valuable’ animal and human corpses, we can begin to answer questions about the dead and their bodies in the wider Roman imagination. What makes a body valued and valuable?

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Continuity and Transformation: Funerary Epigraphy and Romanisation Dynamics at Falerii

Claudia Paparella (University of Toronto), Ada Rabita (Tor Vergata University of Rome)

This paper investigates the impact of Roman expansion on the social dynamics of Falerii Veteres and Falerii Novi through an updated examination of the local funerary epigraphic evidence. Traditionally, literary sources claim that Falerii Veteres was destroyed by Rome in 241 BCE and the Faliscan population was forcibly relocated at Falerii Novi. However, recent archaeological findings challenge this narrative, revealing greater continuity and interconnectivity between the two sites.Building on these developments, this study examines funerary inscriptions in Latin and Faliscan to bridge the gap between archaeological evidence of continuity and literary accounts of disruption. The epigraphic evidence highlights genealogical continuity among local elites and the emergence of a new socio-political landscape, wherein some families began asserting participation in public life, as evidenced by the adoption of nominally Roman-style public offices. These inscriptions suggest that Roman influence was profound, yet it was often mediated through and adapted to existing local social structures.Thus, this study presents Falerii as a compelling case-study for a nuanced model of Romanization emphasizing local agency, innovation, and resilience. Additionally, it offers a replicable methodological model for examining continuity and transformation in central Italy during the Roman Republican expansion.

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The Sarcophagus of Adelphia and the Semantics of Female Commemoration.

Camilla Marraccini (IMT LUCCA / IMT- Alti Studi.)

The sarcophagus of Adelphia, discovered in 1872 in the Catacombs of San Giovanni in Syracuse, represents an iconographic unicum in the corpus of Christian-Roman sarcophagi. The figurative program on its lid has generated sustained scholarly debate.This paper investigates the iconographic singularity of the sarcophagus through a central question: what is the relationship between the deceased Adelphia and the chosen Iconography for her sarcophagus? By disentangling both the compositional logic and the referential models behind the imagery, through an iconographical analysis that looks for models, continuities and innovations, the sarcophagus can be more accurately situated within a broader framework of shared visual language and representational strategies. Through a comparative analysis this papers aims to understand how the ways of representation and portraiture of the deceased change in the transition between pagan and Christian iconography.Understanding the commissioner’s intentions requires an integration of iconographic analysis with epigraphic and archaeological evidence. By situating the sarcophagus within the broader social context of its commission, the analysis emphasises the potential intimate connection between Adelphia, her concrete social power and the female figures depicted on the lid, and, more broadly, the need for Christian wealthy women for new female visual representations in private Christian art.

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Beyond Myth and Imago: A Holistic and Contextual Approach to Mythological Sarcophagi of Roman Phoenicia

Nicholas Aherne (University of Groningen)

The last four decades of scholarship on Roman mythological sarcophagi have witnessed significant contributions with emphasis on how their iconographies represented the deceased and acted as consolatory aids to mourners. However, predominant focus has been on sarcophagi from Rome and disproportionately on figural iconographies, whilst their materiality, ornamentation, inscriptions, and human remains have been comparatively neglected. This paper shifts attention to the mythological sarcophagi of Roman-period Phoenicia and employs a holistic and contextual approach, drawing upon disciplines of art history, archaeology, epigraphy, and classical literature to reconstruct their functionality. Strikingly, the mythological sarcophagi of Phoenicia all depict scenes of violence, hubris, or scandal. This paper consolidates theoretical approaches that have explained such scenes as mechanisms for providing a visual release for the emotions of mourners, who could find comfort and practise self-restraint through relating to the tragedies of mythological figures. To this approach I contribute a consideration of how the materiality and visuality of the sarcophagi transcended the stimulation of emotions and thoughts to shape ritual acts, such as, the treatment of the corpse and the offering of garlands. Furthermore, I set the sarcophagi within their funerary landscape, analysing their display contexts and wider consumption patterns of the region.

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Receiving Philoctetes: Illness, Genre, and Time

Grace Gunning (University of Cambridge)

The character of Philoctetes appears only on the margins in Homer, always consigned to a counterfactualor an event that takes place outside the scope of the epic. However, Philoctetes was a popular character inAttic tragedy – all three of our extant tragedians have a Philoctetes – and appeared often in laterengagements with the epic and tragic genres during the Hellenistic and late antique periods. In this paper,I seek to examine how Philoctetes is received and refashioned as a character on the margins of identity,narrative and genre throughout time. In doing so, I hope to expand on how chronic illness informsnarrative construction, thus contributing to a growing body ofscholarship on chronic illness and time. I argue that Philoctetes’ character, because of his illness andsuffering, becomes a tool for writers and readers to rethink genre and narrative.I will use Dio Chrysostom’s 52nd discourse as an entry point, examining how Dio’s interaction with thePhiloctetes character constitutes a kind of creative ‘sick time’ which offers possibilities beyond linearnarrative time. I will then apply this lens to other appearances of the Philoctetes character, including the mentions in Homer, the Sophoclean Philoctetes, and Lycophron’s Alexandra.

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A Tragic Nostos: The Influence of Epic in Euripidean Embolima

Maggie Tighe (Oxford University)

Euripides was first criticized by Aristotle for composing choral songs, known as embolima, deemed irrelevant to the plots of his tragedies. These songs often incorporate dithyrambic and cultic features, linking them to the innovative compositional style of the late fifth century BCE, labelled New Music. While twentieth century academics largely echoed Aristotle’s critique, recent scholarship has reconsidered the relationships of these embolima to their respective tragedies. This paper argues that some of Euripides’ most notable embolima, including the Achilles Ode of Electra, the Demeter Ode of Helen, and the Hymn to Apollo in Iphigenia among the Taurians demonstrate overlooked connections to Homeric epic. These connections, previously taken for granted, suggest that Euripides strategically employs epic elements. First, he establishes a continuity between New Music and traditional poetic forms, challenging the notion of a radical separation. Second, by drawing on the authority of Homer, he reinforces the legitimacy of New Music in the theatre. By exploring the interplay between Homeric allusions and innovative musical practices, this paper sheds light on Euripides’ engagement with both tradition and innovation. This analysis repositions Euripides within the debates surrounding New Music and furthers our understanding of the rapidly evolving dynamics of fifth-century Athenian theatre.

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A satyr in the closet: the relationship between Orestes and Cyclops

Paul Touyz (University of Kansas)

In this paper I discuss the performative and thematic relationship of Euripides’ Orestes and his Cyclops. If we accept the dating of Cyclops to 408 BC – the very year in which Orestes was first staged – the plays would be the only tragic-satyric pair from the same tetralogy to have survived. Yet few have read the plays together or considered the implications the dating has for our understanding of the relationship between tragedy and satyr play more broadly. Taking his cue from Froma Zeitlin’s influential study of the allusive texture of Orestes, Toph Marshall argued that the two plays are tied together by an exceptional poetic and performative self-consciousness. Developing Marshall’s reading, I argue that, more than just sharing Orestes’ thematic engagement with literary history, Cyclops echoes both verbal and performative aspects of the tragedy and adapts its strategies and patterns of allusion. By tracing these echoes, I will suggest that Odysseus’ success in rewriting his epic script in dramatic form in Cyclops functions as a positive counterpoint to Orestes’ failure to redefine his mythic-literary identity in Orestes.

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A Teenage Pregnancy, Love, and Loss in Euripides’ Fragmentary Skyrians

Anastasia Stavroula Valtadorou (Hellenic Ministry of Education)

In this paper, I focus on Euripides’ Skyrians, which explores how Achilles first becomes part of the Trojan expedition. Skyrians elaborates on an earlier mythological narrative, possibly originating from the epic cycle (Σ b Hom. Il. 19.326). In that version, Achilles’ mother or his father disguises the hero as a maiden in the palace of Lycomedes on Skyros in an effort to spare him from enlistment. Skyrians must have centered around a pre-marital relationship that concludes unfavourably, especially for the female partner: Deidameia, impregnated by Achilles, is left behind. This paper first explores potential plot details, including a double peripeteia for the couple and the suggestion that Achilles may have been presented as a conflicted hero. My second objective is to explore how this relationship is portrayed and whether Skyrians presented a consensual pre-marriage youthful romance, comparable to those in Antigone and Andromeda. Firm evidence suggests that the relationships depicted in these tragedies, almost certainly, involve a consensual element. Situating Skyrians within the broader context of Euripides’ corpus—particularly in relation to these narratives of youthful romance—will thus offer a valuable framework approaching the matter I seek to explore, that is, heterosexual eros in tragedy.

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Ritual and Friendship in the Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars

Edward Armstrong (BSA & ANU)

This paper investigates the rhetoric and practice of ritualised friendship between poleis in the creation of treaties and alliances during the Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars (431-404 BCE). While commentators have shown separate interest in the personal/polis nature of treaties and alliances in Thucydides (e.g. Herman 1990) and the rituals with which alliances and treaties were made (e.g. Burkert 1985; Hunt 2010), the crucial link between the ritual acts and the personal/polis nature of these agreements remains ambiguous. Through rhetorical and philological analysis of treaties and alliances in Thucydides’ History (1.23; 2.92; 3.52.2; 4.19; 5.18-19) and epigraphic sources (IG3 53; IG3 83; IG3 118), this paper examines the ways in which the acts of taking oaths and pouring libations represented the dynamic between poleis. This paper will demonstrate that inter-polis ritualised friendship was governed by nomos and circumstance. It will illustrate that the synonymity between treaties and libations is a rhetorical trope that represents an inseparability between the speech-act of creating treaties and the act of pouring libations. This paper will contribute to the study of Greek historiography by demonstrating how Thucydides can be consulted productively in conjunction with epigraphic evidence, as few scholars have ventured to do (e.g. Hornblower 1992; Matthaiou 2022).

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An Interdisciplinary Reassessment of Thucydides’ Truest Prophasis through the Lens of the English School of Thought

Pietro Cannatella (Durham University)

Thucydides’ truest prophasis, or truest cause for the Peloponnesian War, posited that Spartan fear grew commensurately with Athenian power. This prophasis has subsequently become central to various Realist schools of thought within International Relations Theory (IR Theory) that concern themselves with regularity-deterministic accounts of inter-state relations. Yet we should question whether Thucydides’ observation, emphasised by the lack of other extant observations in the fifth century B.C.E., should hold the primacy that it does within Empirical IR Theory – or on our understanding of the causes of the Great Peloponnesian War. What is the context behind Thucydides’ truest prophasis, or the context behind the observer himself?These questions naturally call for an historically interpretative framework that can illuminate which pre-existing phenomena in Classical Greek society were so pervasive that they directly and indirectly informed Thucydides’ observation. One such theoretical framework is the English School of Thought (EST). Therefore, this paper will firstly investigate the advantages and disadvantages of using interdisciplinary models, concluding that the EST is a viable middle ground between generalised theory and traditional history. Secondly, it will use EST as a heuristic tool to reinterpret Thucydides’ truest prophasis and to understand the historical and interstate context in which Thucydides wrote.

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Revisiting Myronides’ 458/457 BCE campaign in Boeotia: New archaeological evidence from ancient Eleon

Trevor Van Damme (University of Warwick)

In 458/457 BCE, the Athenians campaigned twice in Boeotia. Thucydides (1.107.1–108.5) and Diodorus (11.80.1–83.4) differ significantly in their narratives but the following outline of the events can be established. At Tanagra, the Athenians joined by the Argives and Thessalians fought the Lacedaemonians and their allies. The Athenians and Argives were betrayed by the Thessalians and suffered heavy losses but not a clear defeat. A truce was arranged, and the Lacedaemonians withdrew from Boeotia. Two months later, the Athenian general Myronides led a second campaign into Boeotia and soundly defeated a large Boeotian force at Oenophyta. In the events leading up to, or immediately after, the second battle, the walls of Tanagra were pulled down. Athens then took control of most, if not all, of Boeotia for the next decade. In 2024, excavations at ancient Eleon, located 8 kilometres west of Tanagra, revealed a fortification surrounding the lower town that was destroyed in the mid-5th century BCE. The proximity of Eleon to Tanagra suggests a likely connection with Myronides’ campaign in 458/457 BCE. The evidence from Eleon therefore lends new support for Diodorus’ account that Myronides engaged in a sustained campaign throughout Boeotia that impacted multiple sites beyond Tanagra.

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Assaulting Iconography: The Visual Footprint of Marriage-by-Capture in Ancient Greek Vase Painting

Ryan Peck

Paper cancelled

The non-recognition of the credit of the Argive women in the ‘official’ Argive tradition on the death of Pyrrhus (Paus. I 13.8)

Generoso Cefalo (Università di Pavia)

In the 5th century BCE, the Argive women, led by Telesilla, repelled the Spartans’ attack on Argos, and they duly celebrated their victory.In 272 BCE, the contribution of the Argive women was again essential against Pyrrhus, who was struck to death by a tile or a stone thrown at him by one of the many women who climbed onto the roofs to target the Epirote army. Although the Argives revived the memory of Telesilla in celebrating this victory, we find no trace of honours paid to the Argive women, or at least to the one who killed Pyrrhus: still in Pausanias’ time the ‘official’ Argive tradition asserts that Pyrrhus was killed by Demeter in the guise of a woman (see. Paus. I 13.8).I will suggest that the pro-Macedonian Aristippus is behind this choice. He was struggling for power against Aristeas, who allowed Pyrrhus to enter Argos. Since Aristippus likely seized power over Argos (perhaps as a tyrant) after Pyrrhus’ death, he may have chosen to spread the story of Demeter’s intervention to stabilise his power from the outset, showing the Argives how Demeter punished Pyrrhus and how she instead approved Aristippus’ power and alignment with Macedonia.

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From ignorance to innovation: interdisciplinary approaches to ageing in ancient Greece

Fiona Hobden (The Open University)

With the proportion of over-65s rapidly growing, older people are increasingly prominent within communities and government policy. International research agendas have followed apace, with medical studies on the physiological processes of ageing complemented by investigations into the health, wellbeing and lived experiences of older members of society, as well as their engagement with and representation in culture. Such research provides a stimulating set of questions and approaches that might illuminate experiences of growing old in ancient Greece in new ways. But with such a variety, what scenarios most correlate, what methods best fit the agenda, what is practical and feasible? The answers dictate the pattern and outcomes of research. They also determine where the researcher draws or opens the boundaries, pursuing interdisciplinarity individually or working collaboratively across disciplines. From its author’s engagement with cultural gerontology to pursue an ‘autobiographical’ approach, with sociological studies to explore communities of care and with therapeutic body mapping to generate visual analyses, this paper reflects on some of the opportunities and challenges presented by interdisciplinarity for the ancient historian. It also argues for the joy of embracing serendipity and experimentation in the pursuit of interdisciplinary research, moving from ignorance to innovation (and back again).

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Gender Politics in the Oikos: Family Structure in Epirus during the 4th-1st centuries BCE

Karolina Frank (University of Warsaw)

The study of family relationships within the oikos in ancient Greece has traditionally focused on Athens during the Classical and Hellenistic periods, largely due to the abundance of source material from the polis. This Athenian model, where men controlled family organisation and finances while women were subservient to their male kyrios, has been treated as the standard across Greece. However, Pierre Cabanes’s study of Epirus (1976) challenged this view, suggesting that Epirote society featured collective ownership and a more significant role for women both within the household and public life.Despite new methodologies from anthropology and women’s studies and fresh sources like the Dodona oracular tablets, this area remains underexplored. This paper examines family organisation, formation, and functioning in Epirus from the 4th-1st centuries BCE, focusing on women’s roles in managing the oikos. Using concepts of personal agency and “fields of action,” it compares Bouthrotos and Dodona manumission inscriptions, evidence of women’s business dealings, and localised oracular queries from Dodona. It argues that while the Epirote oikos upheld patriarchal order, it operated as a cohesive unit involving both genders in decision-making and that women could assume leadership roles within their families under certain conditions.

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Hellenistic innovations: the transformation of the Athenian discovery of agriculture

Ariadne Pagoni (University of Oxford)

This paper will explore attitudes towards Athens as an inventor in the Hellenistic period through narratives of its discovery and distribution of agriculture. This myth is found in Archaic and Classical art and Classical literature and the tradition gained further momentum in the Hellenistic period with different emphases. Athens’ value of philanthrōpia in this and other myths shifts into something less martial and more cultural, less concrete and more vague. Athens’ greatness is transformed into her goodness and inventiveness and is something which is treated as assumed but only elusively explained. Overall, this paper will argue that the innovations in the narrative of discovery respond to questions about what the city of Athens has to offer in the Hellenistic period.

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Talking Foreign in Plutarch: the Representation and Function of Multilingualism

Judith Mossman (Coventry University)

This paper looks at Plutarch’s frequent focus on who is speaking what language and the significance he puts on this. Sometimes he uses it as a method of characterisation, as with Alexander speaking Macedonian at a crucial moment in the narrative of the death of Cleitus in the Life of Alexander; at other times it is emblematic of a wider concept, as with the play of languages and Hellenism in On the Obsolescence of Oracles. In any case the fact that he so often notes what the language of communication is striking in itself, and suggests a strong interest in the philosophy of language linked with his Platonism.

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Foreign Scripts and Foreign Orality in Post-Classical Greek Literature

Alexei Zadorozhny (University of Liverpool)

While the Greeks traditionally foregrounded oral speech as a key criterion of non-Greek ethnicity, writing was a factor too, given the strong tendency to attribute the invention of writing to either the Phoenicians or the Egyptians. This paper considers how foreignness is framed in post-classical Greek literature through references to and/or fantasies about scripts used by languages which are neither Greek nor Roman. Encounters with foreign writing systems could result in an outburst of bias against its otherness (e.g. Lucian, Hermotimus 44), but equally might be subsumed under more balanced and appreciative ethnographic evaluation (e.g. Diodorus Siculus, 2.57.4). The spotlight is often on the moment of translation of foreign writing by the local interpreter (e.g. “Harpocration”, Cyranides proem) or by the Hellenic intellectual super-hero, such as Philostratus’ Apollonius of Tyana. Epigraphic and other texts in foreign symbols (multilingual monuments, too) are mobilized into scenarios revolving around memory about the past and representation of power. Particularly interesting and noteworthy are the relatively infrequent occasions when foreign script is understood to operate side-by-side with the sound of foreign language – notably, in Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica – as well as the reservations about translating and transcribing Egyptian words into Greek (Corpus Hermeticum 16.2; Aelius Aristides 36.109).

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Letters and the symposium: the construction of proximity in Imperial Greek literature

Ben Cartlidge (University of Liverpool)

Sympotic texts are deeply concerned with physical presences. Letters, on the other hand, maintain friendships over distance. Both these genres come into their own in Imperial texts, and their parallel growth instructs us about different ways in which the self relates to the – distant or proximate – other. This paper sketches out the construction of space in ‘the second sophistic’. It suggests that symposium and letter are antagonistic genres; they compete in the construction of a role for literature in society.Athenaeus then takes a more central role as an example of a text which synthesises both impetus. By incorporating distal texts into the proximal genres, Athenaeus constructs a peculiarly all-encompassing persona. These reflections lead us to reconsider Athenaeus’ relationship with Imperial literature more generally, for instance in contrast with other sympotic and persona-constructing texts. Athenaeus articulates a particular view of a dynamic relationship between selves and others.This relationship is reflected in the dialogue organisation of the text, and leads us to more general reflections about Athenaeus’ shaping of his material. The portrayal of selves, and the definition of selves, emerges as a central concern for his multivalent and polyvocal text.

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The Lives of Others: Roman Multiculturalism and the Boukoloi

Robert Cioffi (Bard College)

This paper uses the Egyptian Boukoloi (or “Cowherds”) as a case study in how Roman imperial literature imagined, constructed, and deconstructed racial, ethnic, and social difference. The Boukoloi did not herd cattle. Rather, they were pastoralist bandits who lived in the Nile Delta, grew their hair long, spoke a non-Greek, non-Roman language, and, according to some authors, practiced human sacrifice and other terrifying acts. Yet, for all that they lived outside the ‘civilised’ world of Egypt, they appear in a remarkably range of literary and historical sources (Achilles Tatius, Xenophon of Ephesus, Heliodorus, Cassius Dio), documentary texts (e.g., P. Thmouis 1) and Demotic Egyptian literature (as the ꜥꜣ.mw in the Inaros cycle). Using the work of James C. Scott to read their depiction against the grain, this paper argues that this hard-to-define but easy to villainise group became a touch stone for thinking about the relationship of Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians to outlaws and outliers in the world of the Roman empire.

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Augustinus contra Donatistas: the social power of polemical sermons in 5th-century Roman North Africa

Amy Daniels (Stellenbosch University)

The 4th/5th-century conflict between Donatists and Catholics is sometimes framed as a purely theological issue, for that is the front on which the Catholic bishop Augustine battled his opponents. The label of ‘heretic’ placed on the Donatists, however, had important social consequences, for heretics were persecuted by the state. Yet, in Roman Africa, these ‘heretics’ outnumbered their Catholic peers, from which may be deduced that they addressed peculiarly African concerns. What are we to make of the use of political power to quash an African Christian sect? And how did Augustine, the African Catholic bishop, address this, if at all? Did his sermones ad populum support Rome’s colonial dominance in North Africa, or could they have served to quell tensions in Hippo and surrounds? Because the sermons are polemical, but not directed at his opponents (rather to the flock he sought to comfort and direct), they address the confusion and concerns of Catholics, even while engaging dialectically with the Donatists — all from a position of power. This paper applies a Discourse-Historical Approach to Augustine’s anti-Donatist sermons, bearing in mind the extant accounts of the events of the Catholic/Donatist conflict.

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Prudentius’ use of the female body to explore the failure of language in the Psychomachia

Thomas Moffitt (University of Nottingham)

The Psychomachia of Prudentius (c. 348-c. 413) is an epic poem that illustrates the conflict between anthropomorphised virtues and vices within a Christian soul. This paper aims to analyse the significance of presenting these concepts as women beyond mere grammatical gender, reflecting Late Antique gender norms in this Christian allegory, which has become a hallmark of the personification epic genre. The portrayal of female warriors engaged in the battle for the Christian soul has sparked extensive debate in academia, with the authorial intent unclear. This paper seeks to reshape the discourse on how the physical female body serves both literally, in relation to human notions of sex-gender alignment, and as a symbol of the limitations of human language in conveying spiritual truth. Building on the work of Kirsch (2020) and Breen (2022), I will contextualise Prudentius’ poem within the preceding epic tradition and the Theodosian Empire, exploring the political and social ideals inherent in the Psychomachia and Prudentius’ belief in the eventual irrelevance of gendered social roles after Christ’s second coming. Sin and piety in Prudentius’ corpus further highlight his treatment of the female body, especially regarding the violence exemplified by the destruction of Luxuria in lines 423-424.

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The Tunic of Paul: Memory and Authority in Jerome’s Life of Paul the First Hermit

Harvey Phythian (Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge)

Usually dated to his stay in Syria in the mid-370s, Jerome’s Life of Paul the First Hermit is a revealing text for the construction of late-antique intellectual authority and Jerome’s self-creation. It is well-known that Jerome was an extremely self-conscious author and sculptor of his own persona. However, I want to scrutinise how Jerome used the textual memories of his audience and the wider memory of the Christian Church as community and institution to assert his authority and knowledge. Speaking directly to the widely read Life of Antony by Athanasius (translated by Evagrius of Antioch), Jerome sought to establish himself as an authority on the history of the Church. Not only this, but Jerome’s engagement with the idea of hagiography itself both utilised the memories of saints’ lives and crafted a narrative of how he might be remembered. Jerome was not just concerned with correcting the erroneous opinions of those who thought Antony had been the first desert ascetic, he wanted to show himself to be a descendant of Paul’s asceticism. It is perhaps most striking that in his Life of Paul, Jerome ends not with an injunction to consider Paul as an example, but to ‘remember the sinner Jerome’.

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Quid aliud in nobis est nisi voluntas? The Concept of Will in Saint Ambrose of Milan

Marek Sławiński (Jagiellonian University)

Saint Ambrose of Milan is regarded as one of the most important figures of late antiquity. However, his thought has received little attention from historians of philosophy. Nevertheless, philosophical themes are present in his writings. One such theme is free will. Does Ambrose have a philosophically significant concept of will, i.e. a concept that distinguishes will from simple desires and other similar internal phenomena? I will argue that there is convincing evidence for a positive answer. For Ambrose, will is a practical problem. His main concern is whether a given behaviour is the result of will. Thus, he sees will as a quality of an agent that can be expressed by agency. An agent evaluates, discriminates and chooses which desire to follow and which to reject. Will therefore expresses an agent’s inner sovereignty over his or her actions. Ambrose illustrates this point vividly with the contrast between master and servant: the former can choose freely, while the latter must obey given commands. The master’s freedom, however, does not mean arbitrariness. Freedom means choosing what is good and avoiding what is evil. This is not an easy task, because the ability to choose has to be developed throughout the whole life.

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From Law to Literature to Narrative Studies: The ‘Storyworld’ of the Augustan Marriage Legislation

Rebecca Shaw (University of Leeds)

New approaches to understanding the intersections between literature and Roman law continue to emerge and evolve, and to be informed by other disciplines. However, despite the school of thought which recognises this interconnection, there is limited application of narrative theory – a framework for understanding and analysing not just literature but other forms of storytelling – to Roman law. This paper argues that research in the domain of narrative theory should subsequently be included in this interdisciplinary dialogue. It is in this light that this paper explores how narrative theory can help us make sense of the various literatures, and stories more broadly, about the Augustan Marriage Legislation (18BC). Specficially, it will test a number of key narratological ideas on the assorted narratives that tell the story of the leges Iuliae. How can a narratologically orientated study help us make sense of all the different narratives, whether in literature or otherwise, that emerge piecemeal from this ancient package of legislation? This paper thus proposes that there are major opportunities for the application of narrative theory as a useful and original approach to (re)describe and explain the potency of ancient law, literature and legal stories

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Judging Anger: Law in Seneca De Ira 1.14-19

Erica Bexley (Durham University)

This paper examines Seneca’s discussion of anger and justice in de Ira 1.14-19. It asks how/why Seneca defines anger in connection with the law and how that definition engages with contemporary political-legal concerns.Seneca’s initial schema is simple, presenting law and anger as binary opposites: anger is self-interested (Ira 1.17.7), motivated by passion (Ira 1.18-19), erratic (Ira 1.17.7), and prone to personal reactions (Ira 1.17.7-18), while law is impartial (Ira 1.16.5), reasonable (Ira 1.15.3), measured (Ira 1.19.5-6), and impersonal (Ira 1.16.6). Implicit in this comparison is the idea of personal revenge versus legal redress, where the neutrality of the latter is meant to counteract the former.But the schema involves complications. de Ira intertwines anger with retributive justice even as it idealizes their separation. As a “desire to exact punishment” (cupiditas poenae exigendae, Ira 1.3.2) anger risks trespassing into the legal sphere of remedying delicts, while from the other side, law’s enactment through and by individuals threatens to destabilise its impartiality. Law’s susceptibility to anger troubles Seneca, reflecting de Ira’s broader anxieties about the angry conduct of powerful people. The work’s cautionary exploration of law acknowledges and hopes to remedy moral flaws at the heart of contemporary Roman legal practice.

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Wandering Verses. Poetry, Paternalism and Legal Allusions in Pliny’s Letters

Laura Donati (University of Liverpool)

In Ep. 2.10, Octavius Rufus is encouraged to finally publish his verses: some of them have leaked and failure to claim authorship might jeopardise his literary immortality. To evoke this threatening perspective more vividly, Pliny, claims that these verses might find a new owner, ‘just like wanderers’ (ut errones), i.e. slaves at large. The English ‘wanderer’ and ‘truant’ have been regular translations of the Latin which the word erro tries to convey. In most recent translations of this letter of Pliny, however, ut errones is rendered as ‘as runaway slaves’, which is not wholly accurate, as the appropriate technical term in Latin would be fugitivi. The terms are used almost interchangeably in literature, but the difference between wanderers (errones) and runaways (fugitivi) is intensely debated by the jurists of the Digest (several of whom are contemporary of Pliny). Reading this simile and the whole letter against legal provisions, this paper shows that Pliny makes a series of calibrated choices in describing Rufus’ verses and attitude: deploying legal echoes, he indirectly compliments his friend’s literary pursuit, but also his very own slave-owning practice and ability as an orator in court cases.

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Literary Laws: Women, Sex and Slaves in the Reign of Constantine

Lisa Pilar Eberle (University of Tuebingen)

In 326 CE the emperor Constantine issued an edict criminalising women having sexual and/or quasi-marital relationships with their own slaves (CT 9.9.1). This paper harnesses the edict’s literary dimensions to propose a new interpretation of this law. Not opposition to mixed-status unions (Evans-Grubbs 1995) or a desire to preserve female honour (Harper 2011), but Constantine’s communicative goals in the year 326 produced this caesura in the legal framework governing women and their slaves.The edict’s text evoked tropes otherwise attested in comedy, elegy, and mythography, and in so doing it conjured up the well-worn plot of women needing protection from men, love, and ultimately themselves. Not just in this law but also elsewhere – CT 9.8 (326) & 9.24.1 (320/326) – Constantine staged himself as providing such protection for women that were not yet / no longer married. As Constantine made prosecution for adultery the sole preserve of male relatives, preferably husbands (CT 9.7.2; 326), he also styled himself as maritus / pater patrolling the sexual propriety of all women that had nobody else to do so. His changes to the law on adultery were not to be taken as signs of a lax attitude concerning women’s sexual mores more generally.

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Getting the Most out of your Unseen: Teaching Ancient Languages

Caitlin Casselman (Bolton School)

This talk responds to the common problem faced by teachers of giving pupils unseens which are quickly forgotten and whose content can be opaque or mystifying. Informed by research in MFL, I have been trialling a new method of using unseen Latin and Greek translations in my own teaching, by creating curriculums in miniature designed to give unseen passages greater relevance to pupils and therefore improve vocabulary retention. My lightning talk would explore the benefits of collating unseens grouped thematically and how these might form apart of a structured programme of language learning based on topics, similar to techniques used in MFL. I will propose ways educators at all levels could adopt a vocabulary curriculum, create impactful resources, methods of formative assessment based on unseens,and easily synthesize these into their current teaching. I will suggest that these vocabulary curriculums will make engaging with unseens in classroom routines more rewarding both for pupils and teachers. My hope is that fellow educators will help to contribute to this vision for salvaging the utility of unseens through critical discussion of these ideas and methods.

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Cuneiform, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin: A New Year 7 Curriculum

Andy Keen (Bristol Grammar School), Andrew Keen (Bristol Grammar School) , Daniel Watkins (Bristol Grammar School)

This paper outlines a newly implemented Year 7 curriculum at Bristol Grammar School, introducing pupils to a range of ancient writing systems and languages beyond the traditional Latin focus. Through cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Classical Greek, and Latin, the curriculum offers a broader understanding of the origins and development of language, writing, and culture. It follows a chronological journey through different civilisations, incorporating Asia and Africa alongside Europe for a more inclusive historical perspective.In the first half-term, students explore Sumerian cuneiform, the earliest known writing system, through hands-on activities like writing on clay tablets, and texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. They also study the Cyrus Cylinder and Bisitun Inscription as tools of empire.The second half-term focuses on Egyptian hieroglyphs. Students learn to decode alphabetic and biliteral signs, and study gods, kings, and myths to explore Egyptian religion and philosophy. Translation and decoding exercises enhance their linguistic skills.The final two terms shift to Classical Greek and Latin. While laying a foundation in Classical studies, the curriculum also challenges the Eurocentric lens often found in Classics education, encouraging pupils to appreciate the ancient world’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

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Back in Time: Starting the KS3 History Curriculum in the 2nd Century.

Holly Mason (The Open University)

Classics is not a widely accesible study option and not included in the history curriculum in secondary school. Rather, the curriculum starts students’ historical journey in 1066. This led to students having misconceptions about the history of Britain; for example, being introduced to black Tudors as the first ethnic settlers in Britain when research tells us that there were people of African descent in the Roman Empire in Britain prior to this. Looking further into Classics, I discovered that very few schools in the country teach Classics at KS3 and that this subject is usually reserved for those in independent schools (although work by Classics For All is ongoing to make the subject more accessible for all learners). My presentation will discuss how Classics could be embedded into the KS3 curriculum in all schools and be made accessible to learners from different backgrounds by designing and commenting more broadly on the intent, implementation and impact of a Scheme of Work and how it could be developed for schools. Not only does this give a new and different perspective on the school curriculum, it can also promote the study of Classics to all and inspire students to pursue this discipline.

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Elitism in Latin Teaching: Late Antiquity & Today

Joel Moore (Charterhouse School)

The primary goal of an education in Classical Latin in Late Antiquity was to acquire social capital in elite circles. Students earned this through thorough knowledge of strict grammatical forms, the meta-language to describe them and certain ‘canonical’ texts. This allowed a student to signal their social status. In 21st century Britain, Latin teachers teach the same ‘canonical’ texts and often place a premium on grammatical accuracy in a similar way to Late Antique teachers. However, we are wary of elitist connotations around Latin. Rather than imparting a status symbol, we want to teach Latin as a vehicle to meaningful engagement with the Ancient Roman world. Allowing learners of all backgrounds to access this subject is important. It is not inherently elitist. Accusations of this limit the appeal of the subject, hindering our goals.I argue that through an examination of Late Antique Latin teaching materials that we can infer which elements of the Late Antique curriculum sought to propagate elitist connotations around Latin. We can then challenge these elements in our own curricula. This can mitigate accusations of elitism, foster a wider appeal for the subject and more suitably meet the goals of a 21st century education in Latin.

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Servius on the Eclogues: Allegoresis and the Fiction of Realism

Marco Gay (St Anne’s College, Oxford)

Recent research on Theocritus’ Idylls and Virgil’s Eclogues has emphasised the fictional nature of the pastoral world depicted by bucolic poetry, a genre whose artificial ‘realism’ was already considered particularly suited to authorial self-representation in antiquity. Mirroring the dual nature of bucolic poetry, ancient commentaries on Theocritus’ Idylls alternate between a ‘simple mimetic’ and a ‘biographical-allegorical’ approach; under their influence, the same duality shapes the exegetical tradition on Virgil’s Eclogues. While Servius’ call for an ‘intermittent’ application of allegoresis, limited to matters concerning Virgil’s smallholding, has attracted scholarly attention, less heed has been paid to his appreciation of the fictionality of the Eclogues. For Servius, the accurate portrayal of herdsmen is a crucial feature of bucolic poetry. Virgil, he argues, achieves this through linguistic characterisation and by depicting typical pastoral activities. In Servius’ view, ‘realism’ corresponds to ‘stereotypical characterisation’, intended as a source of verisimilitude. Notably, this understanding mirrors ancient reflections on comedy, and Servius frequently reads the Eclogues through a comic lens. This ‘comic framing’, I argue, illuminates the commentator’s focus on ‘realism’ and his cautious use of allegoresis as an interpretive method.

Workshop

Simile and the self: Virgil’s autobiography 

Talitha Kearey (St Andrews)

This paper develops recent scholarship on Virgil’s ancient authorial reception, which has reframed his readers’ hunt for autobiography less as naïve subscription to the ‘biographical fallacy’ than as a complex literary game founded in creative and rigorous literary-critical approaches. It takes its starting point from a startling aspect of ancient Virgilian biography: that every time direct speech is attributed to Virgil, it takes the form of a simile, and moreover alludes directly to episodes in his own poetry. Virgil’s readers, I will argue, saw the core of Virgil’s poetic nature consisting in a particular relationship with the simile form: he naturally speaks in simile; his life and works form a literary continuum characterised by the slippage and interchange of tenor and vehicle from work to work; and as his representations of fiction and reality shift and merge through simile, so too his (auto)biography becomes less a property of history than of literature. Reading Virgil’s similes through the lens of recent simile studies focusing on fictionality and authorial interventions, I argue, allows us to see not only a key element of his poetic more clearly, but to read alongside ancient readers too.

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Speaking with ‘Caesar’s Tongue’: Virgil, Augustus, and Ben Jonson’s Poetaster (1601)

Emma Buckley (St Andrews)

Poetaster offers one of the richest encounters with authorial impersonation in early modern performance. The complex and intersecting literary tissue of this ‘temporal palimpsest’ recreates the biographical lives of the poets and politicians of the Augustan age, in ways that have been finely dissected by Nora Goldschmidt (2019). This paper takes its start from her discovery of interesting and potentially ominous ‘displacements’ of biography in the play, above all in a stage characterisation of Ovid that draws from negative biographical material concerning Augustus. In this paper I apply this theory of ‘displacement’ to the character of Virgil in this play. I argue that while Virgil is presented at first in ‘canonical’ mode, reading the Aeneid to Augustus (V.i; cf. VSD 31), his personhood is complicated and even compromised when he becomes part of the actual ‘arraignment’ of Poetaster, finally proclaiming judgement in ‘Caesar’s tongue’ (V.iii.512). Exploring the elision of ‘Virgil’ and ‘Caesar’ within the play, I suggest that even – or rather especially – Virgil is not immune from Poetaster’s dark meditation on the oppressive power of authority.

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Culicis sint carmina dicta: Virgil as Gnat

Syrithe Pugh (University of Aberdeen)

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A Greek Tragedy in Disguise (?): Interpreting Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana

Cecilia Cozzi (Carleton College)

Adapted from Verga’s short story and play in 1880, Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana showcases opera’s engagement with literature. I argue that the interpretation of this work benefits from Greek tragedy. Commentators (Morini 1990, Baldacci 1990) hint at its tragic undertones and compare its Sicilians’ farmers to the ancient Greeks (Lawrence 1936). My analysis expands these points, suggesting that the opera portrays the structural opposition between order and disorder, deeply rooted in Greek tragedy (cf. Segal 1999). I contend that in Cavalleria the Sicilian village is a kosmos where two different forces interact, namely the pagan substratum and Christianity. The “Siciliana “Turiddu sings off stage, (“O Lola ch’ai di latti la cammisa,” “O Lola, you whose blouse is as white as milk”) functions as a tragic prologue with “local color,” voicing the power of eros. I trace a similar dichotomy in the Chorus and Santuzza singing the Easter Hymn, “Inneggiamo, il Signor non è morto” (“Let us sing hymns, the Lord is not dead”). Given its collective focus, the liturgic chorus compares to choreographic evolutions of a tragic stasimon and its celebration of Easter contrasts with Turiddu’s following toast, which stands as a pagan celebration of wine’s erotic enticement (cf. Bini 1990).

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Edward Falkener in Anatolia: A Victorian Scholar between Classicism and Orientalism

Sebastian Marshall (University of St Andrews)

In recent scholarship on the history of classical archaeology, it has become commonplace to challenge narratives of heroic discovery in publications by European travellers. Rather than taking a triumphal account of the appropriation of classical heritage as its starting point, this paper discusses the work of Edward Falkener (1814-1896), a little-known Victorian architect whose plans to publish an account of his tour around Anatolia from March 1844 to May 1845 never came to be. If Falkener is remembered today, it is usually as the author of the first anglophone monograph on Ephesus and editor of the first British journal devoted to classical architecture. This paper reviews Falkener’s career, but instead of these published works, the focus is on his remarkable personal archive of diaries, sketchbooks, and notes for an incomplete book about Asia Minor. Though he set out to record ‘sublime specimens of Grecian art’, Falkener’s portfolios are filled with records of Byzantine, Seljuk, and Ottoman architecture, which he struggled to integrate into his Hellenocentric publishing projects. This paper adopts a framework of ‘imperial cosmopolitanism’ to explore how Victorian scholars reconciled their interest in bodies of architectural and material heritage conventionally divided between ‘Classical’ and ‘Orientalist’ fields of study.

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Indigenous Epicureanism in Le Brun’s Franciad

Peter O’Brien (Dalhousie / University of King’s College)

This paper explores Epicurean tropes in a 17th century Latin poetic representation of the Indigenous peoples of New France. The Franciad (1639) of the Jesuit Laurent Le Brun includes two books of elegiac epistles voiced by Nova Gallia, a fictive tutelary deity. This conceit allows a poeticised ethnography of Indigenous new world peoples both deeply informed by contemporary prose accounts (the Jesuit Relations) and modelled on tropes of alterity in classical literature. The resulting intertext elicits readings for similarity and difference between real-world subject and literary models, working as an intellectual propaedeutic for would-be Canadian missionaries. This paper examines Franciad 1.6 and 7. Culminating a sequence devoted to Indigenous customs ranging from warfare and torture to hunting, travel, winter living, and housing, these poems shift from a negative and critical gaze via tropes of “barbarity” to a more positive and philosophical construction of Indigenous society and attitudes towards nature: the final stage in an argument for the possibility of Christian redemption. My focus is the markedly Epicurean flavour of this construction. I both elucidate allusions to classical authors (e.g. Horace, Lucretius), and show how Le Brun’s strategy responds to contemporary receptions of Epicureanism (positive and negative) in 17th century France.

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A Matriarchal Labyrinth: The Minoan Civilization as a Product of 20th Century Feminism

Emily Strba (University of St Andrews)

The Minoan Civilization has been the subject of significant interpretations since its rediscovery in the late 19th/ early 20th centuries. Sir Arthur Evans was the influence behind the dominant interpretation, which was fraught with idyllic ideologies. These ideologies are key to understanding the matriarchy debate of the Minoan Civilization. This paper demonstrates how the Minoan matriarchy was used as a tool for 20th century feminism despite academics’ disagreement. Archaeologists have not explored this issue as Minoans have been categorised as culturally agrarian with men at the centre of power structures. The reason for this is that there are no previous historical records depicting women as the ruling authority. However, women are consistently depicted on a larger scale when compared to men giving the feminist theory a base. This begs the question: how much of our understanding about the Minoan matriarchy was a result of the era in which it was popularized, the 20th century? Further, this paper discusses how the popularization of Minoan matriarchy in 20th century feminist ideology has discredited it among academics and if that is the still the right course of action. To fully understand the Minoan Civilization, we first must strip back the layers of interpretation.

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Trans in Classics: the early career view

Mar A Rodda (Merton College, Oxford), Alexandra Hardwick (Wadham College, Oxford), Harrison Biddle (Wadham College, Oxford)

Confirmed participants: Lily Bickers, BristolEsther Meijer, St Andrews Alex MacFarlane, Birmingham. We have also opened a call for contributions by other ECRs, graduate students, and alt-ac contributors. This workshop, structured as a mixture of 10-minute lightning talks and general discussion, will provide a flexible space for trans and genderqueer classicists in the early stages of their careers to share experiences, best practices, and roadblocks around being trans in UK classics. On the model of current work being organised by the Classical Association around disability (https://classicalassociation.org/events/call-for-contributions-classics-he-and-disability-event/ and Neurodiverse Classics: Constructive Connections at CA 2022) and queer classics (Teaching Queer Pasts at CA 2024), the workshop aims to be both a space for researchers and students who share the experience of being trans in the UK context to compare notes, take up best practices, and find solidarity, and for cisgender and/or senior academics and practitioners to learn about how to support their trans and genderqueer colleagues and students, how to bring trans perspectives and trans studies into their teaching, and generally to familiarise themselves with the experiences of being trans in Classics.

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