Past events

Current events can be found here.

When	Time	Description	Add to your calendar
27 March 2024	11:35	CANCELLED Lennart Kruijer (University of Exeter): Beyond Hellenism: Disjunctive Globalization and the Impact of Regional Object Genealogies in the Archaeology of Commagene (Turkey) Old Library, room 134. Full details	Add event
20 March 2024	11:35	Bruce Longenecker (Baylor University): Greco-Roman ‘Associations’ as Comparanda for the Study of Early Christ-Groups: Further Prospects Old Library, room 134. Full details	Add event
19 March 2024	17:00	Elizabeth Foley, ‘The Antigonids, Delos and the Cyclades’ Antigonid Network seminar hosted by the Centre for Hellenistic and Later Greek Studies. Full details	Add event
6 March 2024	11:35	Claire Hall (Durham University): Reckoning the Future: Sundials, Calendars, and Time-measurement in Greco-Roman Future-thinking Old Library, room 134. Full details	Add event
21 February 2024	14:30	Book Launch: Critical Ancient World Studies Please join us to celebrate the publication of Critical Ancient World Studies: The Case for Forgetting Classics (Routledge, 2024) edited by Mathura Umachandran and Marchella Ward.. Full details	Add event
21 February 2024	11:35	Marchella Ward (Open University): How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Classical Tradition? Queering, ReOrienting, Islamising and Other Ways of Crossing the Line Old Library, room 134. Full details	Add event
13 February 2024	17:00	Pierre Bourrieau, ‘Philip V and his coinage. New historical elements from a numismatic point of view’ Antigonid Network seminar hosted by the Centre for Hellenistic and Later Greek Studies. Full details	Add event
12 February 2024	16:00	HASS Inaugural Lecture - Professor Susannah Cornwall Inaugural Lecture for Professor Susannah Cornwall, who is based in the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology.. Full details	Add event
7 February 2024	11:35	Patrick Finglass (University of Bristol): Apollo, Hermes, and the Nymphs: Opening the Ancient Edition of Alcaeus Old Library, room 134. Full details	Add event
24 January 2024	14:35	Symposium on Chris Gill's new book Learning to Live Naturally: Stoic Ethics and its Modern Significance Participants: Chris Gill, Jack Tagney, Ed Skidelsky.. Full details	Add event
6 December 2023	11:30	Michiel Meeusen (Bonn/Leuven), "Medical Culture and Learned Society in the High Roman Empire" CAH research seminar, co-hosted by the Centre for the Study of Science, Technology, Ancient Medicine and Philosophy and the Centre for Medical History. Full details	Add event
29 November 2023	12:00	Emily Hauser's book talk Ancient Love Stories: The Most Remarkable Romances in History Emily Hauser's book talk for her new book, Ancient Love Stories: The Most Remarkable Romances in History, will take place on Wednesday 29th November from 12pm to 1:30pm Exeter College, IoT Lecture Theatre.. Full details	Add event
28 November 2023		Emily Hauser's book talk Ancient Love Stories: The Most Remarkable Romances in History Emily Hauser's book talk for her new book, Ancient Love Stories: The Most Remarkable Romances in History Wednesday 29th November, 12pm–1:30pm Exeter College, IoT Lecture Theatre. Full details	Add event
22 November 2023	11:30	Penny Coombe (Getty), "A Veneer of Empire? Coloured Marble Architectural Veneers in Roman Colchester" CAH research seminar, hosted by the Centre for Motion and Connectivity in the Ancient World. Full details	Add event
15 November 2023	16:00	Inaugural Lecture - Professor Martin Pitts “Alternative histories through material culture. Contaminating encounters and objectscapes in the Roman north”. Full details	Add event
8 November 2023	11:30	Edward Creedy (King’s College London), "Assuming the Mask of Humanity: a New Foundation for Clement of Alexandria’s Christology on the Roman Stage" Joint CAH - T&R research seminar, hosted by the Centre for Hellenistic and Later Greek Studies. Full details	Add event
25 October 2023	11:30	Charlotte Spence (Exeter): "Seu gen(tili)s seu Ch(r)istianus: The Bath Curse Tablets and the Questions of Individual Versus Traditional Religious Practice"; Alice van den Bosch (Exeter), "A Comedy of Martyrs? Gender and Performance in the Mart CAH research seminar. Full details	Add event
11 October 2023	12:30	Daniel Sutton (Cambridge), "Exchanging Words: Language and Civil War in Ancient Greek and Roman Thought" CAH research seminar, co-hosted by the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology. Full details	Add event
4 October 2023	11:30	Tim Whitmarsh (Cambridge), "The Greek Cento, Between Pagan and Christian" Joint CAH - T&R research seminar. Full details	Add event
3 October 2023	19:00	Book launch: Emily Hauser (Exeter), "Ancient Love Stories. The Most Remarkable Romances in History". Website link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/author-talk-ancient-love-stories-with-emily-hauser-tickets-713865158907?aff=oddtdtcreator. Full details	Add event
26 September 2023	16:00	Book launch hosted by the Centre for Classical Reception: "Poggio Bracciolini, Eulogies: Six Laments for Dead Friends", edited by Jeroen De Keyser and Hester Schadee Jeroen De Keyser (Leuven), Brian J. Maxson (East Tennessee), Hester Schadee (Exeter). Full details	Add event
5 - 6 July 2023	9:00	Animals and the Environment in Ancient Mediterranean Medicine Conference Please see details, including full programme and registration link, here: https://ancientmedicineconferences.uk/. Full details	Add event
14 June 2023	11:30	"Fantastic Art Master" - A Visual Digital Humanities Project CAH research seminar with Sharon Khalifa-Gueta (University of Haifa). Full details	Add event
14 June 2023	9:30	The Use and Misuse of History and Literature PGR conference. Please see poster for full programme and details. Registration required: please email cs808@exeter.ac.uk or fjk209@exeter.ac.uk. Full details	Add event
7 June 2023	16:30	At world's end? A global perspective on the nomadic frontier zone of the ancient world CAH research seminar with Milinda Hoo (University of Freiburg), hosted by the Centre for Hellenistic and Later Greek Studies. Full details	Add event
6 June 2023	14:30	Lamentation and the Cyrus Cylinder Joint CAH - T&R research seminar with Lynette Mitchell (University of Exeter). Full details	Add event
31 May 2023	11:30	Citizenship, money, and power: the business of being Roman in Sicily CAH research seminar with Sailakshmi Ramgopal (Columbia University). Full details	Add event
23 May 2023	14:30	Plato and Animals: What is the Purpose of Philosophy in an Age of Environmental Crisis? Joint CAH - T&R research seminar with Louise Hickman (Newman University, Birmingham). Full details	Add event
19 May 2023	11:30	Translating Exile: Challenges and Strategies for Rendering Ovid's "Tristia" into Mandarin Classical Reception Centre event with Jinyu Liu (DePauw University), followed by workshop on translating Ovid. Full details	Add event
18 May 2023	17:00	Book Launch: Emma Nicholson, Philip V of Macedon in Polybius' Histories (OUP, 2023) An event to celebrate the publication of "Philip V of Macedon in Polybius' Histories: Politics, History and Fiction" (OUP, 2023) by Dr Emma Nicholson from the department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology at the University of Exeter. An introduction and response will be given by Professor Andrew Erskine (Edinburgh) and Dr Annelies Cazemier (Southampton). The launch is supported by the University of Exeter's Centre for Hellenistic and Later Greek Studies. Full details	Add event
17 May 2023	15:00	Centre for Connectivity in the Roman World event with Jinyu Liu and Zena Kamash Jinyu Liu (DePauw University), "Resident aliens in the Roman West: possible forms of exclusion (1st to 3rd centuries CE)", & Zena Kamash (Royal Holloway, University of London), "Connection during conflict: contemporary (ab)uses of the Roman past in the Middle East". Full details	Add event
16 May 2023	12:00	Classical Traditions Across Modern Borders: The reception of the Greco-Roman Classics in China Workshop with Jinyu Liu (DePauw University). Full details	Add event
10 May 2023	11:30	Objects, change and academic dogma beyond Rome’s southern frontier: the case of Meroitic Faras CAH research seminar with Henry Bishop-Wright (Cardiff University), hosted by the Centre for Connectivity in the Roman World. Full details	Add event
29 March 2023	16:30	The Common Technical Vocabulary of Perfumery, Dyeing and Alchemy CAH seminar with Sean Coughlin (Czech Academy of Sciences), hosted by the Centre for Knowledge in Culture in Antiquity and Beyond. Full details	Add event
22 March 2023	16:30	Objects, change and academic dogma beyond Rome’s southern frontier: the case of Meroitic Faras CAH seminar with Henry Bishop-Wright (British Museum), hosted by the Centre for Connectivity in the Roman World. Full details	Add event
15 March 2023	11:30	Citizenship, Money, and Power: The Business of Being Roman in Sicily CAH seminar with Sailakshmi Ramgopal (Columbia University). Full details	Add event
8 March 2023	16:30	Ancient pollution and modern victims in the "Oedipus Rex" and "Iphigenia in Tauris": Performance and Religion CAH seminar with Irene Salvo (University of Verona – University of Exeter) & actor Rosario Tedesco. Full details	Add event
1 March 2023	11:30	CAH PGR presentations Wei-Shuo Lu (Exeter, new starter): “The shorter way of Plato’s argument in the Republic”; Matteo Calabrese (Exeter, third year): “The South Picene inscriptions from Penna Sant’Andrea (SP TE 5, SP TE 6 and SP TE 7)”; Luis Pallara (Fribourg): "Learning how to feel in antiquity: Valerius Maximus' views on emotion".. Full details	Add event
8 February 2023	11:30	Workshop: Interdisciplinarity between CAH and RT Sergio Marín (MA student, Hebrew University of Jerusalem), "The theatre of conscience: reading Philo's De Josepho against a Roman background"; and Maren Niehoff (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), "Interdisciplinarity in the Study of Ancient Religions". Full details	Add event
18 January 2023	16:30	Mocking the Canon: Travestied Aeneids in Russian and Ukrainian CAH seminar with Zara Torlone (Miami University, OH), hosted by the Centre for Classical Reception. Full details	Add event
7 December 2022	16:30	When Objects speak for Others: ontological fluidity in Roman slavery and religion CAH seminar with Eva Mol (University of York), hosted by the Centre for Connectivity in the Roman World. Full details	Add event
23 November 2022	11:30	Troy revisited: the reception of Homer in 21st-century women's fiction CAH seminar with Lena Linne (Ruhr University Bochum), hosted by the Centre for Classical Reception. Full details	Add event
9 November 2022	11:30	Holy time, sacred space, and cyclical miracles in Late Antiquity CAH seminar with Robert Wiśniewski (University of Warsaw). Full details	Add event
26 October 2022	11:30	Between the city and the court: intellectual culture in the Hellenistic world CAH seminar with Andrew Erskine (University of Edinburgh), hosted by the Centre for Hellenistic and Romano-Greek Culture and Society. Full details	Add event
19 October 2022	17:00	A Centenary and an Ocean-Going Hero: Tales from the South-West Lecture by Peter Wiseman (Emeritus, University of Exeter) organised by the local branch of the Classical Association as part of the centenary year celebrations. Full details	Add event
12 October 2022	11:30	Destiny, omens and a new god. Religion and the civil wars in Valerius Maximus' Facta et dicta memorabilia CAH seminar with Simon Lentzsch (University of Fribourg). Full details	Add event
14 July 2022	16:15	Why Migration Museums? – A Public Roundtable Discussion - Join online Join us online for a public roundtable discussion, the last of the Migration, Mobility and Displacement Series. Full details available below. To register for the zoom sessions please write To: sekretariat-altertum@uni-potsdam.de (24h in advance) and use Zoom link below Zoom link: https://uni-potsdam.zoom.us/j/64368136838 Meeting-ID: 643 6813 6838 Password: 74720546. Full details	Add event
15 June 2022	16:30	Greek Gods and the Rise of Rome: Religion and Empire Departmental research seminar with Annelies Cazemier (University of Southampton), hosted by the Centre for Hellenistic and Romano-Greek Culture and Society. Full details	Add event
8 June 2022	16:30	Comparing connectivity/mapping mobility: Quantitative approaches to the Greek city-state network Departmental research seminar with William Mack (University of Birmingham), hosted by the Centre for Connectivity in the Roman World. Full details	Add event
25 May 2022	17:00	Reading the Classics in Medieval English Monasteries Classical Association lecture - with Prof. James Clark (Exeter). Full details	Add event
18 May 2022	11:30	Exit Stage Left: The Early (Mis)Fortunes of Satyr Drama Departmental research seminar with Chiara Meccariello (University of Cambridge), hosted by the Centre for Knowledge in Culture in Antiquity and Beyond.. Full details	Add event
16 May 2022	14:30	The Politics of Decadence: Decadence in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries A series of research workshops funded by the International Institute for Cultural Enquiry. Full details	Add event
4 May 2022	16:30	Classical Reception, Translation, and the Shape of a Modest Poetic Career Departmental research seminar with Steven Shankman (University of Oregon), hosted by the Centre for Classical Reception. Full details	Add event
28 March 2022	16:30	Reading Xenophon in the early modern period: who and why with Noreen Humble (Calgary; co-hosted by the Centre for Classical Reception and the Centre for Early Modern Studies). Full details	Add event
23 March 2022	16:30	Does Fortune have Favorites? Polybius on the Purpose/s of Pragmatikē Historia with Seth N. Jaffe (John Cabot University, Rome; hosted by the Centre for Hellenistic and Romano-Greek Culture and Society). Full details	Add event
18 March 2022	10:00	Experience through Metaphor: cultural histories of emotion and the body in antiquity This online one-day symposium seeks to explore the cultural responses and metaphors of the relationships between bodies and emotions in the ancient world, and the theoretical approaches which we as scholars can use to understand these issues: https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/emotionbodyconf/. Full details	Add event
16 March 2022	17:30	The Sadness of Performing History: the Cuthean Legend, Lamentation, and History Classical Association lecture - with Prof. Lynette Mitchell (Exeter). Full details	Add event
2 March 2022	16:30	Classical refractions in South Africa: selected works by Nandipha Mntambo and Wim Botha Samantha Masters (Stellenbosch). Full details	Add event
23 February 2022	14:30	The Politics of Decadence: C.18 'Civilisation' to C.20 Authoritarianism A series of research workshops funded by the International Institute for Cultural Enquiry. Full details	Add event
22 February 2022	15:00	"Imagining Futures" dialogues: inaugural session Full details	Add event
16 February 2022	16:30	Rhetorics of Connectivity with Jacques Bromberg (Pittsburg; Hosted by the Centre for Connectivity in the Roman World). Full details	Add event
9 February 2022	11:30	Knowledge and boundaries in early Greek philosophy: the case of Philolaus of Croton with Shaul Tor (KCL; hosted by the Centre for Knowledge in Culture in Antiquity and Beyond). Full details	Add event
2 February 2022	16:30	Weaving the World: Altars and Cosmography in Greek Sanctuaries with Renaud Gagné (Cambridge; hosted by the Centre for Knowledge in Culture in Antiquity and Beyond). Full details	Add event
26 January 2022	14:30	The Politics of Decadence: Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance A series of research workshops funded by the International Institute for Cultural Enquiry. Full details	Add event
19 January 2022	16:30	Classics and Ancient History research seminar - PGR session: Kat Adams, Clare McLoughlin Davis, Fiona Carroll Full details	Add event
8 December 2021	11:30	Classics & Ancient History PhD workshop: presentations from our new PGRs Full details	Add event
7 December 2021	17:00	Antigonid Network Seminar Manuela Mari on "Interactions between Antigonid kings and local authorities" (epigraphy). Full details	Add event
24 November 2021	16:30	After Empire: A Brief Age of Experiment in the Southern Levant (129-63 BCE) with Benedikt Eckhardt (Edinburgh; hosted by the Centre for Hellenistic and Romano-Greek Culture and Society). Full details	Add event
10 November 2021	11:30	Paths of Joy: from Catullus to Beethoven with William Fitzgerald (KCL). Full details	Add event
9 November 2021	17:00	Antigonid Network Seminar Francesco Ferrara on his book, (2020) Basileus e Basileia. Forme e luoghi della regalità macedone, Edizioni Quasar.. Full details	Add event
3 November 2021	16:30	Isobel Williams presenting her collection Catullus: Shibari Carmina with Isobel Williams (independent; co-hosted by the Centre for Classical Reception and the Centre for Translating Cultures) presenting her collection Catullus: Shibari Carmina Carcanet, 2021; http://isobelwilliams.org.uk/Catullus.php). Full details	Add event
20 October 2021	16:30	From Serif to Scene Text Detection: using machine learning to analyse lettercutting practices across the Roman world with Charlotte Tupman (Exeter; hosted by the Centre for Connectivity in the Roman World). Full details	Add event
14 October 2021	16:00	Routes Conversation: Is the asylum system fit for purpose for Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity (SOGI) claimants? Routes Conversation: Is the asylum system fit for purpose for Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity (SOGI) claimants? with Raawiyah Rifath (Lecturer in Law and PhD Candidate, University of Exeter) and Prof. Nuno Ferreira (Professor of Law, University of Sussex). Full details	Add event
13 October 2021	17:00	Jenny March: "Sophocles' "Oedipus the King" Re-imagined" Full details	Add event
6 October 2021	14:30	Stoicism and Wellbeing: Wisdom for Student Life and Beyond See details, including link for registration, here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/stoicism-and-wellbeing-wisdom-for-student-life-and-beyond-tickets-180248677647. Full details	Add event
29 September 2021	11:30	Comic Sex and Fragmentary Thinking with Matthew Wright (Exeter). Full details	Add event
28 September 2021	17:00	Antigonid Network Seminar Robin Waterfield on his book, (2021) The Making of a King. Antigonus Gonatas of Macedon and the Greeks, University of Chicago Press.. Full details	Add event
16 July 2021	13:00	Change and Resilience in Antiquity Session 5 and Roundtable You are warmly invited to the final session and the Roundtable event in the Change and Resilience in Antiquity Seminar Series.. Full details	Add event
12 July 2021	14:15	Narrating Relationships in Holy Lives http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/narratingholylives/. Full details	Add event
8 July 2021	16:00	Nutrition in ancient medicine Nutrition in ancient medicine John Wilkins (University of Exeter). Respondent: Laurence Totelin (Cardiff University) To register for this talk, please visit: https://ancientmedicineandtechnology.wordpress.com/. Full details	Add event
5 - 6 July 2021	16:00	4th Technosomata workshop. Transhistorical and Intersectional Perspectives This two-day symposium builds on a cooperation between Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Department of Classics and Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies) and Exeter University (Centre for Knowledge in Culture in Antiquity and Beyond) and Centre for Medical History). It is the fourth in a series of workshops organized since 2018.. Full details	Add event
1 - 2 July 2021	14:00	The Sensoaesthetic Aspect of Ancient Materials A workshop organized by Maria Gerolemou (A. G. Leventis Research Associate, University of Exeter) and Thilo Rehren (A. G. Leventis Professor for Archaeological Sciences, The Cyprus Institute). Full details	Add event
30 June - 2 July 2021	9:30	ASYFAIR Virtual conference Adjudicating Refugee Claims in Practice: Advocacy and Experience at Asylum Court Appeals We have an exciting programme about various aspects of asylum and refugee status determination by international speakers, including judges, lawyers and researchers. The conference programme and other details are available on our website: https://asyfair.com/output/events/asyfair-conference-2021/ Registration is free, and will be open from 4 May until 16 June 2021. Please click on the link to register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/asyfair-conference-2021-adjudicating-refugee-claims-in-practice-registration-152681682021. Full details	Add event
25 June 2021	14:00	Change and Resilience in Antiquity Session 4 You are warmly invited to the fourth session of the Change and Resilience in Antiquity Seminar Series, which is being hosted by Emma Nicholson and Irene Salvo.. Full details	Add event
24 June 2021	16:00	Navigating between abstraction and observation: using astrolabes, globes and mirrors in the medieval Mediterranean Navigating between abstraction and observation: using astrolabes, globes and mirrors in the medieval Mediterranean Divna Manolova (The University of York). Respondent: Karen ní Mheallaigh (Johns Hopkins University) To register for this talk, please visit: https://ancientmedicineandtechnology.wordpress.com/. Full details	Add event
23 June 2021	17:00	A Model Court For Migrant Children Webinar to refine and develop proposals for A Model Court For Migrant Children, Chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy of the Shaws. Full details	Add event
9 June 2021	16:00	Routes Conversation Why should colonial histories be central to the study of migration and what does taking this seriously really mean? with Dr Lucy Mayblin and Dr Luke de Noronha Routes conversations are monthly meetings where two scholars or activists from different disciplines discuss a migration question from their different perspectives. In this conversation Dr Lucy Mayblin, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at The University of Sheffield and Dr Luke de Noronha, Lecturer in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies at UCL will have a conversation on 'Why should colonial histories be central to the study of migration and what does taking this seriously really mean?'. Full details	Add event
4 June 2021	14:00	Change and Resilience in Antiquity Session 3 You are warmly invited to the third session of the Change and Resilience Seminar Series, which is being hosted by Emma Nicholson and Irene Salvo.. Full details	Add event
2 June 2021	14:00	Belonging/not belonging: the case of Classics in Brazil with Juliana Bastos Marques (Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro) Classics and Ancient History seminar: 'Belonging/not belonging: the case of Classics in Brazil' with Juliana Bastos Marques (Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro). Full details	Add event
25 May 2021	17:00	The Roman physician and the knowledge of the patient The Roman physician and the knowledge of the patient Lauren Caldwell (UMass Amherst). Respondent: Chiara Blanco (University of Oxford) To register please visit: https://ancientmedicineandtechnology.wordpress.com/. Full details	Add event
14 May 2021	14:00	Change and Resilience in Antiquity session 2 You are warmly invited to Session 2 of the online seminar series on Change and Resilience in Antiquity, which is being hosted by Irene Salvo and Emma Nicholson.. Full details	Add event
5 May 2021	16:00	Routes Event: Precarious protection: Inside Europes Asylum Appeals with Dr Nick Gill This will be an informal talk outlining some of the findings from a set of ethnographies of asylum appeals in France, Germany, the UK, Belgium and Austria conducted over the last few years by researchers at Exeter University as part of the ASYFAIR project. It will examine why asylum appeals are important, but also some of the challenges they encounter on the ground. It will raise concerns about the superficiality and (in)accessibility of legal protection via asylum appeals, and use this to reflect on some of the problematics of refugee protection more broadly. Full details	Add event
5 May 2021	15:00	Public Cults in Private Hands: the Appropriation of Cult Sites from the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE with Dr Consuelo Manetta Public Cults in Private Hands: the Appropriation of Cult Sites from the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE with Dr Consuelo Manetta. Full details	Add event
3 May 2021	17:00	Copper and human health in the Chalcolithic, the classical, and the age of COVID Copper and human health in the Chalcolithic, the classical, and the age of COVID Julie Laskaris (University of Richmond). Respondent: Colin Webster (UC Davis) To register, please visit: : https://ancientmedicineandtechnology.wordpress.com/. Full details	Add event
28 April 2021		Hippocratic Machines with Dr Maria Gerolemou Whereas there are certain studies on medical tools in antiquity, none of them deals with what is called in scholarship medical machine. In this talk, I offer first a brief overview of the Hippocratic notion of mêchanê by presenting three different types of machines a. natural machines; b. simple machines; c. complicated machines. Second, I discuss three examples of complicated Hippocratic machines (the Hippocratic board, ladder and the bench) and suggest ways of approaching them.. Full details	Add event
16 April 2021	14:00	Change and Resilience in Antiquity You are warmly invited to an online seminar series on Change and Resilience in Antiquity, which is being hosted by Irene Salvo and Emma Nicholson. The first seminar will take place on Friday 16th April at 2 pm and we will proceed monthly with a concluding Roundtable in July (please see the attached programme for full details).. Full details	Add event
15 April 2021	16:00	Medicine in ancient Cyprus: the archaeological evidence Medicine in ancient Cyprus: the archaeological evidence Demetres Michaelides (University of Cyprus). Respondent: Daniel King (University of Exeter) To register please visit: https://ancientmedicineandtechnology.wordpress.com/. Full details	Add event
24 March 2021	15:00	Can figures of speech persuade? The case of zeugma with Dr William Short Can figures of speech persuade? The case of zeugma with Dr William Short. Full details	Add event
22 March 2021	16:00	Ancient cabinet of curiosities Ancient cabinet of curiosities Véronique Dasen (University of Fribourg). Respondent: Dunstan Lowe (University of Kent) To register for this talk, please visit: https://ancientmedicineandtechnology.wordpress.com/. Full details	Add event
17 March 2021	15:00	A violence all her own: male fantasies of gender violence in late antiquity with Jennifer Barry CAH seminar: 'A violence all her own: male fantasies of gender violence in late antiquity' with Jennifer Barry (University of Mary Washington) Jennifer Barry presents material from her new book project, tentatively titled 'A Violence All Her Own: Male Fantasies of Gender Violence in Late Antiquity'. In this session she will workshop a section of the book that focuses on a Christian male fantasy of a saintly romance gone wrong.. Full details	Add event
10 March 2021	15:00	Humpty Dumpty and the court of Cyrus the Great with Professor Lynette Mitchell Humpty Dumpty and the court of Cyrus the Great with Professor Lynette Mitchell. Full details	Add event
9 March 2021	17:00	Katerina Panagopoulou on her book, Τhe Early Antigonids: Coinage, Money and the Economy Katerina Panagopoulou on her book, Τhe Early Antigonids: Coinage, Money and the Economy (Recording TBC). If you would like to attend the seminars, please email Emma Nicholson (e.l.nicholson@exeter.ac.uk) or Annelies Cazemier (a.cazemier@soton.ac.uk) for a Zoom invitation. Full details	Add event
3 March 2021	16:00	Routes event: U.S. Immigration Law - a brief overview of issues with Anthony Vale Anthony Vale is a 1972 law graduate from the University of Exeter, who has been practicing law in the USA. Tony represents immigrants caught up in the US immigration system, who seek asylum or relief from removal. He has been successful in cases on behalf of non-citizens from Angola, Cameroon, El Salvador Guatemala and Honduras. These cases are difficult and raise many constitutional issues, which he will clarify and discuss. Full details	Add event
25 February 2021	16:00	Mercury in late antique and medical sources: practice and theory Mercury in late antique and medical sources: practice and theory Matteo Martelli (University of Bologna). Respondent: David Leith (University of Exeter). Full details	Add event
10 February 2021	16:00	Routes event: Marriage, migration and Integration with Professor Katharine Charsley Full details	Add event
3 February 2021	15:00	Environmental trust as Context and Condition for Economic Transactions: The Case of Ancient Rome with Dr. Filippo Carla-Uhink CAH seminar: 'Environmental trust' as Context and Condition for Economic Transactions: The Case of Ancient Rome' with Dr. Filippo Carlà-Uhink (Universität Potsdam) Join Zoom Meeting https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/j/94150448373?pwd=SzFiSFhpNVAvbEx0OW9NdGUvR1VsUT09 Meeting ID: 941 5044 8373 Password: 112162. Full details	Add event
28 January 2021	17:00	Genos between phusis and technê Emanuela Bianchi (New York University). Respondent: Gabriele Galluzzo (University of Exeter). Full details	Add event
27 January 2021	16:00	Linguistic Translation and Cultural Translation in Trilingual Inscriptions with Dr Rachel Mairs Linguistic Translation and Cultural Translation in Trilingual Inscriptions with Dr Rachel Mairs. Full details	Add event
26 January 2021	17:00	Peter Van Alfen on The Antigonid Coins Online project Peter Van Alfen on The Antigonid Coins Online project (Recording TBC). If you would like to attend the seminars, please email Emma Nicholson (e.l.nicholson@exeter.ac.uk) or Annelies Cazemier (a.cazemier@soton.ac.uk) for a Zoom invitation.. Full details	Add event
17 December 2020	16:00	Technology and Disability Technology and Disability Christian Laes (University of Manchester). Respondent: Jane Draycott (University of Glasgow). Full details	Add event
9 December 2020	15:00	Gendered religious knowledge in Hellenistic inscriptions with Dr Irene Salvo CAH seminar: 'Gendered religious knowledge in Hellenistic inscriptions' with Dr Irene Salvo(Exeter) Join Zoom Meeting https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/j/98232117743?pwd=LzhOQkZWeGJtNW1rR05INGdlUzQrZz09 Meeting ID: 982 3211 7743 Password: 846409. Full details	Add event
2 December 2020	16:00	Routes Conversation: What Does Citizenship Mean Today? with Dr Ben Hudson (Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter) and Daniel Mutanda (MPH Candidate at the University of Warwick) Routes Conversation: What Does Citizenship Mean Today? with Dr Ben Hudson (Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter) and Daniel Mutanda (MPH Candidate at the University of Warwick). Full details	Add event
2 December 2020	15:00	Landscape and History: A fresh look at Hannibals March in Polybius with Dr Nicolas Wiater Landscape and History: A fresh look at Hannibals March in Polybius - Nicolas Wiater (St. Andrews) Join Zoom Meeting https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/j/94738725451?pwd=aWhxK0Uza3hWb1hxSmFkbmYwcU0rUT09 Meeting ID: 947 3872 5451 Password: 622726. Full details	Add event
27 November 2020	16:00	Archytas dove in context an investigation of the non-human agency between paradoxography, encyclopedism, and mechanics in the ancient world Archytas’ dove in context: an investigation of the non-human agency between paradoxography, encyclopedism, and mechanics in the ancient world. Full details	Add event
26 November 2020	16:30	Monica D'Agostini on her book, The Rise of Philip V (2019) Monica D'Agostini on her book, The Rise of Philip V (2019) (Will be recorded). If you would like to attend the seminars, please email Emma Nicholson (e.l.nicholson@exeter.ac.uk) or Annelies Cazemier (a.cazemier@soton.ac.uk) for a Zoom invitation.. Full details	Add event
25 November 2020	15:00	CAH seminar: The folds of Olympus: ecocritical approaches to ancient mountains in the Iliad and beyond with Professor Jason Konig CAH seminar: 'The folds of Olympus: ecocritical approaches to ancient mountains in the Iliad and beyond' with Professor Jason Peter König (St. Andrews) Join Zoom Meeting https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/j/92540542695?pwd=SnBZUG54Q3hVVXJUWCtPRnJmYWhrdz09 Meeting ID: 925 4054 2695 Password: 852508. Full details	Add event
18 November 2020	15:00	CAH seminar: Empire and Islands: The Case of the Cyclades with Professor Rebecca Sweetman CAH seminar: Empire and Islands: The Case of the Cyclades with Professor Rebecca Sweetman (St. Andrews) Join Zoom Meeting https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/j/98767503756?pwd=WFZiTHgvbW9mR1pHbHBaaW9uZjkrQT09 Meeting ID: 987 6750 3756 Password: 251429. Full details	Add event
11 November 2020	15:00	Phronesis as a persuasive rational excellence with Elena Cagnoli Fiecconi (UCL) Phronesis as a persuasive rational excellence - Elena Cagnoli Fiecconi (UCL) Join Zoom Meeting https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/j/99200480753?pwd=bktPS21sTGJDdkRsTWtsOW1RSTZYZz09 Meeting ID: 992 0048 0753 Password: 270696. Full details	Add event
28 October 2020	15:00	Made by Africans for Africans? Multiculturalism and pottery in Severan York with Martin Pitts Made by Africans for Africans? Multiculturalism and pottery in Severan York with Martin Pitts Join Zoom Meeting https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/j/99651664090?pwd=M0JrMFI3UnU5L05KeUErTWs1cGdYZz09 Meeting ID: 996 5166 4090 Password: 905209. Full details	Add event
26 October 2020	16:00	Aristotelian science and Hippocratic gynaecology Sophia Connell (Birkbeck, University of London) Respondent: Elisa Groff (University of Exeter) 26 October 2020, 16:00 p.m. (UK time) Please book your place: https://ancientmedicineandtechnology.wordpress.com/aristotelian-science-and-hippocratic-gynaecology/. Full details	Add event
14 October 2020	15:00	Hippocrates in Context: Some Thoughts on Robin Lane Fox, The Invention of Medicine with David Leith Hippocrates in Context: Some Thoughts on Robin Lane Fox, The Invention of Medicine with David Leith Join online: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MGExM2YzYjAtZjlhMS00MDNhLTgzMzYtNDRhZjUxOWM4Nzg1%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22912a5d77-fb98-4eee-af32-1334d8f04a53%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%226e937dec-e3c4-404e-a24f-6bde3e224f85%22%7d. Full details	Add event
29 September 2020	16:00	Introduction to ancient Greek automata Theodosis P. Tasios (Academy of Athens) Respondent: Tatiana Bur (University of Cambridge) 29 September 2020, 16:00 p.m. (UK time) Free admission. Please book your place: https://ancientmedicineandtechnology.wordpress.com/introduction-to-ancient-greek-automata/. Full details	Add event
17 September 2020	16:00	Archytas dove in context: an investigation of the non-human agency between paradoxography, encyclopedism, and mechanics in the ancient world Archytas’ dove in context: an investigation of the non-human agency between paradoxography, encyclopedism, and mechanics in the ancient world Marco Vespa (University of Fribourg) Respondent: Isabel Ruffell (University of Glasgow). Full details	Add event
25 March 2020	14:00	Jason König (St. Andrews): TBC CAH Dept. Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
18 March 2020	17:00	International Institute for Cultural Enquiry Launch Event This event will showcase some of the innovative research projects currently being undertaken by scholars working across disciplinary boundaries. Researchers will present their cutting-edge work, while the audience will have the opportunity both to engage fully with it and to meet a network of interested colleagues from across the university. Schedule: - 5:00-5:30pm - Drinks + Canapés in Queen’s Café - 5:30-6:15pm - Presentation: Professor Elena Isayev ‘Culture and Human Rights? Ambitions for Imagining Futures through Un/Archived Past’ followed by Q+A in Lecture Theatre 1 - 6:15-6:45pm - Research Showcase: Professor Jerri Daboo ‘Cultural Heritage Transformations of Weddings and Marriage among Women in the Tamil and Parsi diaspora communities in India and the UK’ Or Professor Fabrizio Nevola ‘Digital Humanities: Approaches to Renaissance Italy'. Full details	Add event
4 March 2020		UG Dissertation Symposium UG Dissertation Symposium. Details to follow.. Full details	Add event
12 February 2020	14:00	Sophia Papaioannou (Athens): Reading Vergil in Alexandria: Nonnus and the Latin tradition revisited CAH Dept. Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
12 February 2020	13:00	Experimental Archaeology: An international perspective with Roeland Paardekooper Experimental Archaeology: An international perspective with Roeland Paardekooper. Full details	Add event
5 February 2020	14:00	Hella Eckardt (Reading): Bridge over troubled water: Roman finds in rivers CAH Dept. Research Seminar (organised by the Centre Connectivity in the Roman World). Full details	Add event
29 January 2020	14:00	Ben Pullan (Exeter): Nature (Un-)Tamed: Man vs. his Environment in the pseudo-Virgilian Aetna CAH Dept. Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
22 January 2020	14:00	Tom Vozar (Exeter): Longinian Sublimity in the Renaissance CAH Dept. Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
11 December 2019	14:00	Emily Gowers (Cambridge): Are trees really like people? See Further Details for abstract. Full details	Add event
6 - 7 December 2019		Technological Animation in Classical Antiquity Supported by the Leventis Foundation. The conference aims to bring together scholars from the fields of ancient technology, philosophy, archaeology and art. Specifically, the conference focuses on the living/moving artifact and the synesthetic experience that it might offer, as the outcome of a technological procedure that exempts it from its association with illusion and artifice.. Full details	Add event
28 November 2019	15:00	Rachael Bundy (Exeter): 'Teach sad Philomel a louder note’: intersectional responses to Ovid in the long eighteenth century TBC. Full details	Add event
20 November 2019	14:00	Monica Hellstrom (Durham): Celebrating conversion: Gold-glass bowls and baptism in the late 4th century TBC. Full details	Add event
13 November 2019	14:00	Rebecca Sweetman (St. Andrews) Christianization in the Aegean: pilgrims, ports, and pottery TBC. Full details	Add event
6 November 2019	14:00	Katherine Harloe (Reading): Winckelmann’s love letters: a case study in queer literary history See Further Details for abstract. Full details	Add event
30 October 2019	14:00	PhD Workshop TBC. Full details	Add event
23 October 2019	14:00	Prof. Peter Wiseman (Exeter): Augustus on the Palatine: A Palace-Sanctuary The ‘palace-sanctuary’ of Augustus on the Palatine was first identified and described by Daniela Bruno and Andrea Carandini in 2008 (see now The Atlas of Ancient Rome, tables 69-72 and 282), and its discovery is cited in Carandini’s recent book La forza del contesto (2017) as a exemplary paradigm of what modern archaeological methods can achieve. However, there is no mention of this monumental complex in the ancient sources; according to Suetonius, Augustus lived in a relatively modest house and ‘disliked grand palaces’. My presentation will address this paradox, and consider how the mismatch of archaeological and textual evidence may be resolved. Full details	Add event
17 October 2019	15:30	Claude-Emmanuelle Centlivres Challet (Lausanne): Infant nourishment, breastfeeding, sexual violence: can modern social and natural sciences fill Roman silences? See Further Details for Abstract. Full details	Add event
25 September 2019	14:00	Prof. Daniel Ogden (Exeter): Lucian's Chaldaean snake-blaster and the saintly dragon-fight tradition yet again, again See Further Details for abstract. Full details	Add event
24 June 2019		Institute of Coding Summer School 2019 at the University of Exeter For students with little or no experience of programming or coding, the Institute of Coding Summer School at Exeter is an opportunity to enhance your digital skills through a course designed to introduce you to the fundamentals of computer programming and social data analysis. Full details	Add event
7 June 2019	9:00	Technosomata: Sexuality, Gender, Reproduction and technology This workshop proposes to explore the ways that technology (broadly defined) produces, configures or reshapes gender and sexuality. Cosmetics, prosthetics, athletics, pharmaceutics and sexual tools or machines (e.g. dildos, mirrors, adornment: clothes, and jewellery) can all be considered in terms of enhancement technologies with a variety of aims, including longevity, and at healthier and improved appearance. They have a pervasive impact on gender, as they redefine the limits of the physical body, as well as on sexuality in terms of rewriting the script for erotic action emphasizing sexual pleasure, or assisting/preventing reproduction.. Full details	Add event
15 May 2019	16:30	Prof. Douglas Cairns (Edinburgh) Classics and Ancient History Department Seminars. Full details	Add event
2 May 2019	16:30	Prof. Sheila Ager (Waterloo) - TBC TBC. Full details	Add event
1 May 2019	17:00	CA Lecture: Matt Bryden - "Lost and Found" CA Lecture at Exeter College. Matt Bryden is a poet and teacher living in Somerset. In 2018, he won a Literature Matters award from the Royal Society of Literature for his project Lost and Found. This project aims to create a pamphlet of poems treating the Lost Property Office at Bristol Temple Meads station as an entrance to the Greek Underworld. For the last year, Matt has been visiting the Lost Property Office on a monthly basis and making notes while, in tandem, attending Classics lectures at Exeter University with a view to creating a backdrop for his new work. Matt will be discussing his experience as a poet in residence at the office, sharing what he has learned from his research as well as reading from the poems for the first time. Full details	Add event
27 March 2019	16:30	"Notes from underground: Geology and Revelation in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica" Professor Catherine Conners (University of Washington). Full details	Add event
20 March 2019	17:00	CA Lecture: Prof. Greg Woolf (ICS) - Alien Metropolis. Migration, Rome and the limits of cosmopolitanism CA Lecture, Exeter College. Full details	Add event
20 March 2019	16:00	'Let's Be Open About It: Managing the Digital Humanities' Mike Pidd (Director of the Digital Humanities Institute, University of Sheffield). Full details	Add event
13 March 2019	16:30	Did Aristophanes Kill Socrates? An Enlightenment Debate Dr. Ross Caroll (Exeter). Full details	Add event
7 March 2019	18:00	Elena Isayev Inaugural Lecture - The Sky is Hidden: on the Opening of Language and Borders As visionaries have recognised, any place is the story so far. How do we tell that story of past and future intersections? How do we find it in the movement and not only in the soil over which it flows? Where found stones, pots, chariots, spindle-whorls, swords, beads, transform into the treasure chests of journeys to unlock: by Plautus’s comic heroes of love, or Homer’s epic antiheroes of war; of homes returned to, abandoned or found. We need a new language: to capture paradoxes, to expose lived impossibilities, to convey intangible imaginaries. Full details	Add event
7 March 2019	16:00	Old sources, new technology: Computational approaches for the study of colonial Latin American sources Dr Patricia Murrieta-Flores (Lancaster University). Full details	Add event
7 March 2019	10:00	Introductory workshop to GIS and the Spatial Humanities This workshop is available to staff and students, on a first-come, first-served basis. Sign up:. Full details	Add event
28 February 2019	15:00	Sex, Sexuality and Classical Reception This event brings together early career researchers studying how the history of sex and sexuality intersects with the reception of the ancient world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Full details	Add event
27 February 2019	16:30	Warfare, Violence, and Community Disaster in Late Imperial Italy (c. 395-500 CE) Dr Jeroen Wijnendaele (Ghent). Full details	Add event
20 February 2019	16:30	Translation prefaces Prof. Martin Revermann (University of Toronto/ICS). Full details	Add event
20 February 2019	16:00	The British Library’s Digital Scholarship Training Programme Dr Mia Ridge (British Library). Full details	Add event
13 February 2019	16:30	Homer and Miletos: The early history of the Iliad Prof. Hans Van Wees (UCL). Full details	Add event
6 February 2019	16:00	Collaborative and Interdisciplinary Teaching in Digital Classics and Digital Humanities Dr Gabriel Bodard (Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study). Full details	Add event
30 January 2019	16:30	Dr Kathryn Stevens (Durham) - Gentle nostalgia or coded critique? Babylonian scholars on Seleucid kingship Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
21 January 2019	17:30	Stories that Slice, Scald and Bounce: Why Roman Exempla Matter This lecture will explore the enduring fascination of some of the more bizarre and disturbing Roman moral exempla, and explain why they still matter today. Full details	Add event
17 January 2019	17:00	CA Lecture: Máirín O’Hagan (Barefaced Greek Productions) "Barefaced Greek" CA Lecture at Exeter College. 4 short films + Q&A. Full details	Add event
12 December 2018	17:00	"The Art of Faking It: The Letters of Marcus Brutus and Mithridates" The writing of fake letters was widely practiced in antiquity. But how and why did the pseudepigrapher go about his work? To answer such a question, this paper focuses on the letters attributed in antiquity to Marcus Brutus, all of which purport to come from the period 43-42 BC, when the Liberators were preparing for war against the joint forces of Mark Antony and Octavian.. Full details	Add event
5 December 2018	17:30	Professor Karen ni Mheallaigh Inaugural Lecture: Lunar exploration in the ancient world 50 years ago this July, the first human set foot on the Moon. This paper explores the fascinating history of imaginative and scientific lunar exploration in the world before telescope, stretching back 2,500 years into the ancient Greek past. Full details	Add event
28 November 2018	16:30	Prof. Tim Whitmarsh (Cambridge) - "The Invention of White? Skin Colour in Ancient Greece" Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
21 November 2018	16:30	Prof. Leif Isaksen (Exeter) - "The Ends of the Earth: the western section of the Peutinger Map and implications for its origin" Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
14 November 2018	16:30	PhD Workshop Our new PhDs will each present a brief introduction to their work. Full details	Add event
7 November 2018	16:30	Dr Maxine Lewis (Auckland/Oxford) - "The production of space, time, and spacetime in Catullus’ poem 68" Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. The spatial poetics of Catullus’ poem 68 are notoriously complex, from the bizarre image of the Arcadian sinkhole carved by Hercules to the multitude of geographical similes that Catullus uses to explain his emotional landscape. Further complicating matters, in c.68 Catullus portrays time (inherently linked to space) in ways that defy the natural laws. In this talk I examine the spatial and temporal poetics of poem 68, testing whether insights from human geography and philosophy can help us to make sense of Catullus’ unique production of space in this unusual piece of literature. Full details	Add event
31 October 2018	16:30	PhD Workshop Our new PhDs will each present a brief introduction to their work. Full details	Add event
24 October 2018	16:30	Luca Mazzini (Exeter) - "'Triggered identity': the use of Macedonian ethnicity by Blaundos in confrontation with the Roman Empire." Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. The present paper analyses the importance of the Macedonian ethnic for the civic community of Blaundos, a Hellenistic settlement located in the ancient region of Phrygia, Asia Minor. The epigraphic and numismatic evidence indicates that the Macedonian ethnic started to be used in the civic coins and in the civic decrees by Blaundos only during the Roman imperial period and exclusively for political reasons. There is no trace of the Macedonian ethnic in the public inscriptions preserved, nor in the civic coins dated to the Hellenistic period. Moreover, the Macedonian ethnic seems to be claimed by civic institutions of Blaundos only in response to a Roman official authority that intervened directly in the administration. The initial settlers of Blaundos were likely Macedonian soldiers who arrived at the end of the IVrd century BC after Alexander’s conquest, but the Greek and Latin inscriptions of the Roman period reveal that the inhabitants usually referred to Blaundos simply as “fatherland”, without any ethnic connotation. I argue that the use of the Macedonian ethnic in Blaundos represents a case of “triggered identity”. The intervention of the Roman administration in the minting and in the building activity compelled the local authorities to affirm an ethnic that did not actually correspond with the components of Blaundos’ civic community at that time. Did Blaundos become proud of being Macedonian as a direct consequence of the Roman Imperial power, in order to symbolically claim its political autonomy?. Full details	Add event
17 October 2018	17:00	CA Lecture: Dr James Robson (Open) "Beauty, Sexuality and Desire in Classical Athens" CA Lecture at Exeter College. The art and literature of classical Athens provide plenty of rich material for scholars of ancient sexuality to explore: from erotic vase painting, to the highly sexualized portrayal of women on the comic stage, to more muted references to everyday attitudes about beauty, sex and desire. In this talk, James Robson will aim to paint a broad picture of what sexiness constituted for Classical Athenians, exploring topics such as physical characteristics, seductive behaviour and how appearance could be enhanced by clothing or personal grooming. While touching on topics such as sexual attraction, fantasy and taboo, this talk will take a risqué peek into the private bedrooms, whorehouses, drinking parties, wrestling schools and gymnasia of classical Athens in an attempt to add to our understanding of this culture’s often complex relationship with sex and sexual acts. Full details	Add event
10 October 2018	16:30	Prof. Barbara Borg (Exeter) – "Peter and Paul ad catacumbas: a pozzolana mine reconsidered." Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. The burial sites of the apostles Peter and Paul are among the most controversial topics in scholarship on early Christianity. Their cult site on the via Appia, set into and above a former pozzolana mine, is still seen by many as a temporary refuge for their relics during times of persecution, while a growing number of scholars has resorted to the assumption that there were rival traditions related to the Appia site on the one hand, and those on the via Ostiense and the Vatican on the other. I shall reconsider the evidence for the apostles’ burial, and the history of their cult on the via Appia, in the light of both the site’s development from quarry to basilica, and its wider context between the second and third milestone of the consular road. Full details	Add event
30 May 2018	15:00	Dr Anna Judson (Cambridge) Learning to spell in Linear B: evidence for scribal training in Mycenaean Pylos The Linear B writing system was used within the Mycenaean palaces of Late Bronze Age Greece (c.1400-1200 BCE) by scribes who kept administrative records of goods and people under the control of the palaces. This talk will focus on the writing practices of the scribes working at the palace of Pylos in south-western Greece, specifically on the issue of spelling variation. Variation in the spelling of particular terms or sequences occurs frequently between different scribes, and even within the work of a single scribe; it is even possible to see instances when scribes have erased signs in order to correct or change the spelling of a word. This talk will explore the evidence which both spelling variation and scribal edits offer for reconstructing the ways in which the Mycenaean scribes may have been trained to write in Linear B. Full details	Add event
23 May 2018	15:00	Dr Emma Nicholson (Exeter) Polybios, Philip V, and Rome: Redefining the Barbarian Polybios, Philip V, and Rome: Redefining the Barbarian. Full details	Add event
9 May 2018	15:00	Prof. David Scourfield (Maynooth) Literary Form, Historical 'Reality', and Philosophical Exploration in Two Novels of Ancient Rome Several of the best known and most distinguished historical novels on Roman subjects from the twentieth century – Robert Graves’ I, Claudius and Claudius the God, Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, and Gore Vidal’s Julian – are written (with minor variations) in the form of a historical memoir by a Roman emperor. In this paper I shall examine two novels – Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March (1948) and John Williams’ Augustus (1972) – which similarly present an imperial (or quasi-imperial) protagonist but take a radically different pseudo-documentary form, owing much to the distinct traditions of the epistolary novel and the historical sourcebook. Considering both form and content, the paper will explore these texts in terms of the tensions they display between historicity and fictionality, their representations of political power, and their value for historical understanding. It will be argued that the concerns of both works are, finally, less historical than philosophical, and may be seen to reflect the loss of old certainties in the world in which they were created. Full details	Add event
2 May 2018	17:00	Dr Jonathan Prag (Oxford) Rams and Warships: bronze rostra from the final battle of the First Punic War This paper will present the spectacular finds from the underwater survey being undertaken off western Sicily by the Soprintendenza del Mare of Sicily. Principal among these is the very rare find of 12 bronze rams from warships which sank during the final battle of the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage, in 241 BC. At least 8 of the rams are inscribed (7 Latin, 1 Punic) and the rams and their inscriptions not only provide new information on warships and institutions in the period, but also create significant problems for our current understanding of naval warfare at this date. CA Southwest Lecture, in association with the Roman Society. Full details	Add event
28 March 2018	15:00	Dr Francesca Middleton (Cambridge) After cento: analysing works of difficult authorship Recent years have encouraged classicists to no longer use ‘cento’ as a pejorative term, limiting its use to the description of poetry which follows the strict, formal method of re-ordering extant verses into a new narrative. This better reflects the use of ‘cento’ as a term in antiquity, but it nonetheless encourages us to ignore the lessons we may learn from those who, even if in bad faith, have used the term ‘cento’ to describe a broader range of literary practice. One example of a work dismissed as cento in the twentieth century is Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica. Writing in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, Bernard Knox describes this poem as follows: ‘14 books of hexameter verse as full of Homeric formulas and reminiscences as they are empty of inspiration – a leaden echo of the great voice of his original … a kind of Homeric cento on a vast scale.’ In this paper, I salvage insight from such remarks by discussing why it might be useful to appreciate cento as a phenomenon which reaches beyond the strict centonic method. I argue that the principles of cento allow us to better analyse all works which in their response to earlier compositions avoid the traditional line-of-succession model constructed, paradigmatically, by the canonical epic tradition. All three of the major cento poets – Proba, Ausonius and Eudocia – construct identities for themselves which may be measured against their epic predecessors. Homer and Virgil are praised, and Ausonius for one marks the tension between Virgil and himself, writing in his prefatory letter that his cento is de alieno nostrum: ‘from another, [but] mine’. This difficult and double image of authorship imagines what we might recognise as the double horizon of expectations present in cento poetry: one developed by the poetry’s verses and another developed by the framing narrative, whether that follows the tropes of epithalamion (Ausonius) or the Christian gospels (Eudocia). This is a striking poetic method, which disrupts our understanding of readerly reception, which since Jauss we have understood as the reader’s engagement with a single horizon of expectations, constructed through the mechanism of genre. Acknowledging these principles of cento’s poetic method, we may change the questions we ask in relation to notionally centonic, notionally derivative works such as the Posthomerica. Rather than analysing these works on the basis of traditional reception theory – asking how Quintus manipulates or else deviates from the horizon of expectations set by the Homeric epics – we may ask what new horizon is constructed to compete with that of Homeric epic. In this paper, I suggest that the Posthomerica’s opening and the preponderance of similes throughout the poem encourage us to understand the poem’s heroic narrative against a story about the power of the physical world, and following the steps of this analysis will articulate a method which is beneficial for the discussion of all works of indiscrete authorship. Full details	Add event
21 March 2018	17:00	Prof. Patrick Finglass (Bristol) A new papyrus of Sophocles Sophocles fr. 583, from his Tereus, is one of the most moving passages of extant Greek tragedy; delivered by Procne, it explores the sorrow of marriage as seen from a woman’s perspective. The publication in June 2016 of an ancient papyrus manuscript from the early second century, P.Oxy. 5292, which overlaps with this quotation, is therefore a major event in Sophoclean scholarship. The papyrus allows us to locate Procne’s speech within the play, to infer how much she knows about her sister’s fate when she speaks the lines, and to see how Sophocles prepared for the dramatic meeting between the two sisters. This paper demonstrates how the papyrus transforms our knowledge of this fragmentary drama, and sets the play alongside others that feature unhappily married women, bringing out relevant similarities and differences, and thereby assisting our understanding of the presentation of women in Greek tragedy. Full details	Add event
14 February 2018	15:00	Dr Catherine Ware (Cork) Spectacular justice: the arena in Claudian's panegyrics The comparison between man and animal is a trope of epic, the spectacle of consular games is a set piece of panegyric. In a complex network of allusion, Claudian combines these two figures so that the villains of his panegyrics, dehumanised through epic similes, are recalled in their animal guise for punishment as part of triumphal or consular games. Full details	Add event
7 February 2018	15:00	Elisa Groff (Exeter) It is the Mind that must be cured: Asceticism as Medical Treatment for Female Satyriasis in St Mary of Egypt The fact that women did experience sexual pleasure puzzled men of medicine and religion in Antiquity. The story of St Mary of Egypt (traditionally included in the “Lives of the Harlots of the Desert”) about a prostitute who was not a prostitute but a woman affected by unrestrained sexual desire beautifully embodies this dilemma. This paper will look briefly at the Life of Mary of Egypt and Aetius of Amida’s chapter on satyriasis (77 Zervos). It will illustrate that ancient medicine and religion spoke the same language when it came to women’s sexual pleasure. Indeed, they shared the diagnosis of “female satyriasis” and its cure: a removal treatment to remove 1) an overly enlarged clitoris (clitoridectomy), 2) blood (phlebotomy), and 3) external inputs through isolation, sexual and food abstinence (asceticism). Full details	Add event
31 January 2018	15:00	Dr Gabriele Galluzzo (Exeter) Aristotle etc.: a rough guide to parts and wholes in ancient philosophy With very few exceptions, ancient philosophy scholars have paid significantly little attention to the issue of the part-whole relationship in ancient philosophical texts. This is surprising, given the obvious interest of the topic from a philosophical viewpoint and the role it plays in a number of areas, including cosmology, metaphysics, linguistics and aesthetics. In this paper, I wish to sketch out some conceptual coordinates that might be of help in the study of parts and wholes in ancient philosophy. The paper breaks into two parts. (i) In the first, I explain why the part-whole relationship is a problem for ancient philosophers and outline three different ancient solutions, which can be described as Monism (Parmenides), Reductionism (the Atomists) and Hylomorphism (Aristotle), respectively. (ii) In the second part, I show how Aristotle’s solution allows for wide applications beyond metaphysics, and in particular to such areas as political theory, mathematics, linguistics and literary theory. I end the paper by advancing the suggestion that Aristotle’s treatment of tragedy in the Poetics, and more particularly his fetishism for the plot as the defining feature of tragedy, is driven by his metaphysical views on unity, wholeness and the part-whole relationship. Full details	Add event
17 January 2018	15:00	Dr Valeria Cinaglia (Exeter) Ethics: Ancient Greek Comedy The fragmentary nature of Middle Comedy, and what is left of Old and New Comedy beyond Aristophanes and Menander, makes it difficult to carry out a comprehensive enquiry into the ethical dimension of Greek Comedy. My attempt will be, therefore, to reconstruct an outline of the topic building mainly on the extant works of Aristophanes and Menander, while supporting my general argument with what is left of other Ancient Greek Comic texts, as far as the evidence can be stretched. In this paper I identify two themes, which, I argue, help shaping my inquiry into the ethical aspects of Ancient Greek Comedy. Accordingly, in part (i) I will start with exploring how Old Comedy reflects on the role of the individual with respect to other people – i.e. his household, community of friends or fellow citizens – the value of reciprocity, the danger of isolation and the search for the right balance among all these factors. In part (ii) I will focus on the different kinds of figures discussed by Aristophanes and Menander, with a brief glance at the pivotal importance that Middle Comedy most probably played in this shift. On the one hand, Aristophanes presents figures in a way that does not immediately invite us to analyse them as realistically presented ethical agents, and it is sometimes difficult to identify a development in their ethical character or an interest in elaborating a reasoning conducive to an improved ethical understanding. In Menander, on the other hand, we can document in more detail a specific interest in describing complex ethical situations and in presenting a clear analysis of the figures’ ethical character development and how this is linked with the presence or absence of ethical understanding. We will see, however, that it is difficult to ascribe this apparent variance in focus to the whole genre. My conclusion is, thus, that some of the fundamental ethical themes do remain consistent throughout time. And indeed, even when we find an apparent sharp difference in ethical focus among comedies written in different periods, we should question whether we have enough evidence to assess this variance. Full details	Add event
10 January 2018	17:00	Prof. Helen Lovatt (Nottingham) Argonauts: Myth and Reception The myth of Jason and the Argonauts has been told and retold since its very beginnings. It was already a well known story before the Odyssey. But when does a myth cease to function as myth and become crystallised by its most famous versions? For the tale of the Argonauts, the versions of Apollonius and Euripides’ Medea are crucial. This paper explores the interface between myth and reception in the Argonautic tradition by looking at a number of case studies: Charles Kingsley and the Orphic Argonautica, Robert Graves and his Greek Myths, and the influence of the 1963 Harryhausen movie ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ on recent children’s literature. CA Southwest Lecture, in association with the Hellenic Society. Full details	Add event
13 December 2017	15:00	Dr Rebecca Flemming (Cambridge) Galen and the plague The Antonine Plague, the great epidemic that first swept across the Roman Empire in AD 165, and recurred in waves over the following decades, is now generally agreed to have been smallpox. This identification has been argued for and assumed in the most recent sustained treatments of the topic and has shaped the lively debates on the demographic and economic impact of the plague. But this move rests on shaky foundations, and this paper will challenge this conclusion, and attempt to take the discussion in some new directions, using the evidence provided by the physician Galen, wider comparative work in historical epidemiology, and recent genomic research into past pathogens. Full details	Add event
6 December 2017	17:00	Dr Emma Cole (Bristol) Greek Tragedy and the Australian Psyche The reception of Greek tragedy in Australia largely mimicked its reception in England until the mid-twentieth century.. Full details	Add event
29 November 2017	15:00	Prof. Pat Wheatley (Otago) Polis vs. Basileus: Some New Perspectives on the Siege of Rhodes, 305/04 BC Abstract to follow. Full details	Add event
22 November 2017	17:30	Whatever happened to Greek tragedy? Greek tragedy is one of the most popular and best known genres of ancient literature. But it is not as well known as we like to think, for today all that remains of tragedy is a mere thirty-two plays, a tiny fraction of what once existed. This lecture investigates what happened to all the other plays, and imagines a counterfactual scenario in which a completely different selection of tragedies happened to survive. Full details	Add event
15 November 2017	15:00	Dr Emma-Jayne Graham (Open) Into the woods: Place and pilgrimage in early Roman Italy A decade ago, it was suggested that pilgrimage ‘seems to play a smaller part in Roman religion than in Greek’ (Elsner and Rutherford 2007, p. 24). Nonetheless, archaeological evidence from mid-Republican Italy indicates that the inhabitants of towns and villages made use of a range of sacred sites located in various extra-urban settings across the landscape. This paper will explore the evidence for pilgrimage from sites such as these in early Roman Latium, reframing this activity in relation to the performance of movement for ritual purposes and the temporality of place. Focusing closely on evidence from two sacred sites – the well-known monumental sanctuary dedicated to Diana Nemorensis at Aricia, and a much less well-known natural cave and spring at Pantanacci near Lanuvium – it will be suggested that pilgrimage certainly did play a part in early Roman religion, albeit in forms and for reasons that have not been explored before. Full details	Add event
8 November 2017	15:00	Prof. Richard Seaford (Exeter) Oedipus Oeconomicus Abstract to follow. Full details	Add event
25 October 2017	15:00	Research Presentations by PhD students This week, our current PGR students will give short presentations on their current research. All welcome. Ben Pullan. Reading Pietas in the Appendix Vergiliana; Bijan Omrani. Euripides: Old gods and new philosophies; Rachael Bundy. Ovid’s engendered nightingale: representations of masculine authority and female lamentation in English literature, 1554-1922; Liz Scarth. Battleground of the Mind: Roman Psychological Trauma; Siwaree Attamana. Interaction between the Roman Empire and southeast Asia, c. 100 BC – AD 400; Alasdair Gilmour. The impact of Rome on European Iron Age societies: A cross-societal study of pottery use using merged computer-generated typologies; Lucas Amaya. Title TBC. Full details	Add event
18 October 2017	15:00	Prof. Elena Isayev (Exeter) Hospitality and Asylum: the measure of society from Homer to the polis, and the UN. Abstract to follow. Full details	Add event
11 October 2017	15:00	Prof. Ian Rutherford (Reading) Pindar on the sources of the Nile Abstract to follow. Full details	Add event
5 October 2017	17:30	Professor Neville Morley (Exeter) Thucydides and the Politics of Truth Post-truth. Populism. Democracy in crisis. Increasingly polarised rhetoric. These contemporary symptoms of a society in crisis were prefigured in the work of the fifth-century BCE Greek writer Thucydides – with the promise that anyone reading his account would gain a true understanding not only of past events but of the present and future. Thucydides is still treated as an authority today – but with radically different ideas about what we can learn from him. This lecture will argue that he does not offer maxims or laws, but a training in how to make sense of a complex world in which ‘truth’ itself is in dispute. Full details	Add event
28 September 2017	17:00	Prof. Rebecca Langlands (Exeter) No-Win Situations: Roman Heroes and Military Ethics The heroic, blood-soaked tales of their ancestors intoxicated the youth of ancient Rome, revealing moral truths and inflaming them with desire for virtue. This lecture will argue that such exemplary stories were also used to dramatise ethical dilemmas and encourage Romans to reflect on fundamental moral issues - indeed, they can still serve this purpose today. Roman exempla tend to show people of great courage, virtue and tenacity who face very tough decisions about the best way to respond. We will see how a particularly distressing military situation - the desperate suffering of the besieged city - provided for the ancient Romans a wealth of ethical material inviting us to reflect on what we should value most highly in our lives. CA Southwest Lecture. Full details	Add event
6 June 2017	16:30	The impact of global connections and the formation of the Roman Empire (200–30 BC) The remarkable development of Rome from small village on the Tiber to a global Empire remains hotly debated. Many scholars still see imperialism as the main driving force and so far all histories of Rome are histories of Empire that take Italy as point of departure. In my lecture I would like to prudently explore a different interpretation of the formation of the Roman Empire, taking my cue from Globalisation thinking as it was recently explored in the CUP volume Globalisation and the Roman world. World History, Connectivity and Material Culture. The period of ca. 200-30 BC forms a decisive stage in the interconnection of the different (Western-, Mid- and Eastern-) Eurasian spheres and from around 200 BC onwards we witness an unprecedented intensification of connectivity all across Eurasia. It is my hypothesis that processes of (growing) interdependency between these regions are key to the emergence of the Roman Empire. I will suggest to understand the formation of the Roman Empire as part of this new wave of connectivity; seeing Roman imperialism as being only one factor to account for it. Many historical developments can be seen as the (often) unintended consequences of increasing interconnection and interdependency. Societies that benefited most were those that were able to transform themselves – knowingly or not– and ride the wave of change. Especially during the formative, late-Republican/Hellenistic phase of ca. 200-30 BC, Romans were struggling immensely with the impact of the ever-widening world they became part of. The interaction with and incorporation of “the foreign” now necessarily became one of the key components of Romanisation. All this had major consequences: Romans conquered the world but simultaneously their society and culture became like that world.. Full details	Add event
31 May 2017	16:30	Was Aristotle an Essentialist? To speak of the essence of an object is to speak of those intrinsic features that make the object what it is. This view is rooted in Aristotle's philosophy. His metaphysics (the science of being) is built upon the idea that the principle of every real entity (e.g. human being, horse, plant, house) is its essence. In my talk I will challenge this conception of essentialist metaphysics. In the first part, I will give an overview of Aristotle's metaphysical project and I will focus on the enquiry into sensible objects in book Z. In the second part, I will show that his essentialism is exposed to some philosophical difficulties, which lead Aristotle to dismiss it. Full details	Add event
24 May 2017	16:30	Port societies in the north-west Roman provinces: cemeteries and sailors’ stories. To the cities on the coasts and rivers of Roman Britain, Gaul and Germany came individuals who variously moved in the service of the emperor, followed economic opportunities, or were displaced through human trafficking. In contrast however to the Mediterranean, Roman-period human mobility within Cunliffe’s Atlantic façade, especially its northern sectors, has received limited attention. For this the limited epigraphic habit in this zone is partly to blame. This paper therefore reviews the insights into port societies in this region which can be derived from a funerary context; it compares the evidence of funerary inscriptions, of osteological and biomolecular analysis of human skeletal material, and of the rituals by which the dead were buried. It assesses how far funerary traditions in these cities inform the composition and dynamics of port societies. Particular attention will be paid to rituals and objects which appear ‘out of place’. Difficulties of principle and isotope characterisations from human skeletal remains have undermined the connections suggested in the past between ‘exotic’ rituals and the geographical origin of the deceased. Instead the paper considers how non-local practices and objects could be read by participants in ritual as embodying a shared past, a tradition around which communities may have shaped their identity through reference to a perceived common experience and shared origins.. Full details	Add event
17 May 2017	16:30	Lucian’s Amores and the Greek novels Lucian’s Amores is one of the risqué works of antiquity. At times bordering on the obscene, it contains the notorious anecdote of agalmatophilia involving the Cnidian Aphrodite, and what constitutes most of it, with constant nods to the standard works on the subject, is the long answer to the question of whether it is better to love girls or boys. But it is also the story of a journey that takes the protagonist Lycinus through places, situations, and encounters with art, which readers of Greek novels in particular would have found familiar. This paper aims to show that a substantial part of the Amores is in fact a web of allusions to the novels, obtained through either the compression or the extension of cornerstone elements from the works of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, and Achilles Tatius. Full details	Add event
10 May 2017	17:00	Digital Classics CA lecture: Dr Charlotte Tupman (University of Exeter) Digital Classics (title tbc.). Full details	Add event
29 March 2017		CA lecture: Prof Alison Sharrock, University of Manchester), ‘Gender and transformation in Ovid's Metamorphoses: “optimistic” and “pessimistic” readings' Further details will be released shortly.. Full details	Add event
22 March 2017	16:30	Professor Susanna Elm (UC Berkeley), ‘Homeland - Salvian of Marseilles On the Governance of God.’ Salvian of Marseilles composed his treatise On the Governance of God, more accurately on the present judgment of God, in the aftermath of the Vandal sack of Carthage in 439, to try to explain to his audience why God saw it fit to punish the Romans with such severity as he had evidently just done. In eight books that have come down to us in incomplete form, he chastised those who wished to listen for many failings and obvious injustices, arguing that the barbarians had been granted their victories justly. Social historians and those interested in the barbarian migrations have long since mined the work for important insights, but have rarely analyzed it as a cohesive whole, much less asking who exactly the Romans were Salvian had in mind, and what role exactly he assigned to Carthage and Africa. Full details	Add event
15 March 2017	16:30	Lecture by Prof Chris Kraus (Yale University) Further details will be announced nearer the time.. Full details	Add event
8 March 2017	16:30	The empty triclinium: an exploration of Roman food culture. You are not what you eat. You are what you think you are eating. You are also where you are eating, with whom, when and how. Roman diet has traditionally been studied from the literary perspective and more recently, through the use of archaeological material. It could be argued that the ubiquity of food mentioned in ancient texts, and the abundance of physical remains such as plates, cups, amphorae, carbonized plant remains and animal bones, means that we have a good understanding of Roman food culture. Within certain contexts, we know what people were eating and with whom, what their tableware looked like, how the room was decorated and at what time of day this activity was taking place. We are less sure where people purchased their food and the price of most goods, but, for the most part, we have at least some knowledge of each step of the production, consumption and deposition process. What we do not know, and what has received almost no scholarly attention, is how the Romans viewed and conceptualized their own food culture. What did they think it meant to ‘eat like a Roman?’ Roman food culture is fraught with ambiguity and contradiction. Was there the notion that this ambiguity made it characteristically Roman? Was there even a synonymous notion of Roman food culture or did people retain a localized sense of identity? This paper will attempt to provide answers to these questions and take the unique approach of exploring Roman food culture from the Roman perspective.. Full details	Add event
1 March 2017	16:30	Dr Ian Goh (University of Exeter), ‘Scipionic bodies’ Event details will be released in the near future.. Full details	Add event
22 February 2017	16:30	Professor Chris Gill (University of Exeter), ‘Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Book 1- How Roman and How Stoic?’ This talk offers a close reading of book of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, focusing on the interplay between typically Roman and Stoic strands. Book 1 has a rather different ‘voice’ from the other books, gives a prominent role to Roman themes, and is less obviously informed by Stoic ideas. However, on closer inspection, the approach and organisation of the book is decisively shaped by Stoic thinking, especially on ethical development; its prominent use of exemplarity is also informed by Stoic thinking. However, Marcus assumes a version of Stoic ethics and politics which is compatible with engagement with Roman social modes. The talk closes by considering the conception of self, and self-shaping, implied in Book 1. Full details	Add event
15 February 2017	16:30	Dr Donncha O’Rourke (University of Edinburgh), ‘Propertian solutions to Callimachean problems’ The Roman reception of Callimachus as a stylistic model incompatible with long poems on 'kings and heroes' (Virg., Ecl. 6.3) sets up a series of problems for those Roman poets who do, in one way or another, end up writing long(ish) poems on kings and heroes. This is especially true for Propertius, whose affiliation with Callimachean aesthetics defines his elegy in opposition to epic, but whose most explicit self-definition as the 'Roman Callimachus' (4.1.64) launches a poetry-book that breaks the elegiac mould to incorporate the themes of Virgilian epic and Augustan politics. This tension is already well understood. My paper hopes to shed light on some previously unexplored - but in fact rather precise - ways in which Propertius shows that writing long(ish) poems on kings and heroes is perfectly in line with his professed Callimachean credentials. In this way, through a hyperextension of the Callimachean programme, and through the resolution of the problems posed thereby, Propertius, like Virgil, 'stages' a poet of his generation coming to terms with an Augustan poetic agenda. Full details	Add event
8 February 2017	16:30	Dr Katherine McDonald (University of Exeter), ‘Reitia and the epigraphic habit of Este’ The epigraphic culture of the Veneto region is full of contrasts, particularly between its two largest cities: Este and Padua. At Padua, dedications to the gods were made within the city, many dedications are uninscribed, and all named dedicators are men. At Este, religious activity was focussed on a number of large extra-mural sanctuaries, each associated with a particular deity and social group. At the sanctuary of Reitia, goddess of writing, we find many dedications inscribed in the Venetic language, mostly in the form of bronze copies of writing tablets and styluses. The majority of these inscribed dedications to Reitia were made by women – or at least, they feature female names in the nominative. This paper explores the relationships between the goddess Reitia, the practice of dedicating inscribed writing tools and the position of women in Atestine society. In a society where we expect literacy to be predominantly male, how and why did these practices develop? Does the use of women’s names on bronze writing tablets and styluses provide evidence that women used these objects in daily life? This paper suggests that the dual functions of Reitia – her association with women and her association with writing – came together to create a highly specific local epigraphic practice, whose linguistic and archaeological traces continue into the Roman period of the city. It also argues that the dedicatory practices of women may have affected the wider epigraphic habit of the city, with women’s names appearing at Este more often than at Padua, not just in dedications but also in other text types. Full details	Add event
1 February 2017	16:30	Taylor Fitzgerald (PhD, University of Exeter), ‘Imperial concordia: dynasty and collegiality in Late Antiquity. Scholarship on imperial legitimacy during the late third and early fourth centuries suggests a dichotomy between legitimacy based on collegial rule (i.e. the Tetrarchy) and legitimacy based upon dynastic claims (i.e. Constantine and his family). This dichotomy is present for scholarly discussion of the Tetrarchic ‘system’ as well, with some scholars (e.g. Leadbetter 2009) arguing for the prominence of familial connections between the Tetrarchs while others (e.g. Hekster 2015) adhering to the traditional view of the Tetrarchy as avoiding familial ties and presentation—what has been termed a ‘meritocracy’ (Borm 2015). If one looks at the self-presentation of the Tetrarchs (on coinage and inscriptions) as well as the representations of the Tetrarchic imperial college in literature, however, there is more continuity between the emperors of the third century and emperors of the fourth than is often acknowledged. This paper will examine the Tetrarchy outside this false dichotomy by synthesizing examples from a variety of media: imperial coinage, inscriptions, Lactantius’ De Mortibus Persecutorum, and the Panegyrici Latini. The representations of the Tetrarchy in these various forms are often not very different than that of the third-century imperial families: both revolve around the ideal of concordia. Concordia is presented as an imperial virtue important to the Tetrarchy, the idea being that in lieu of dynastic ties, the regime promoted ideas of unity and collegiality. This is found in a variety of media, from statuary to coinage to panegyric. But concordia was also an important imperial virtue throughout the third century and after the end of the Second Tetrarchy. In examining the continuity of concordia alongside representations of imperial colleges this paper will illustrate some of the main themes and arguments presented in my doctoral thesis.. Full details	Add event
25 January 2017	16:30	Dr Myrto Hatzimichali (University of Cambridge) 'Words or things? The linguistic interpretation of Aristotle's Categories.' Among Aristotle’s works, the Categories was the most studied and commented on from the first century BC to Late Antiquity, despite the fact that its commentators could not agree on what it was actually about! What did Aristotle divide into ten categories: words, things, or both, including the concepts that link them? This paper will analyse the view of those who took it to be about words (Stoics expecting to find a grammatical theory of parts of speech), and will present an alternative case where a linguistic interpretation is more promising than its rivals. Full details	Add event
19 January 2017	16:30	Professor Helen King (OU), ‘The material body: what does an ancient womb look like?’ The standard view of votive body parts in the ancient Mediterranean is that there are a lot of wombs and breasts because childbirth was an area on which people felt particularly in need of divine assistance. In this paper, I want to question the identification of these votives simply as wombs. I will do this by setting these objects alongside the different ways in which the womb has been represented in two and three dimensions, and in a range of media, up to the present day, and by showing how textual descriptions can usefully be brought into alignment with visual imagery. Full details	Add event
11 January 2017	16:30	Professor Barbara Borg (University of Exeter), ‘Straddling borderlines: divine associations in funerary commemoration’ This paper contributes to a longstanding and controversial debate around portraits in divine costume. It aims to disentangle various aspects of divine associations such as metaphorical (verbal or visual) panegyric, a hierarchy of honours, as well as different degrees and kinds of divinity, immortality. I take issue with some prevailing views in classical archaeology: that divine associations are primarily a matter for the freedmen class; or that they must be either mere visual rhetorical panegyric (majority view) or else an indication of apotheosis (normally not further explained). Taking into account a range of different sources including archaeological, epigraphic, and literary, I argue that they rather beg the question of what divinity is, for the Romans, and why it was desirable.. Full details	Add event
7 December 2016	17:00	'Eye of night: the Moon as a site of optical paradox in antiquity and today' - Dr Karen ní Mheallaigh Classical Association (South West branch) by Dr Karen ní Mheallaigh. Full details	Add event
1 December 2016	16:30	‘Ruins and (digital) reconstructions: the cinematic city in Pompeii (2014) and other recent films.’ - Dr Joanna Paul (OU) The cinema has always been deeply fascinated by the ancient city: from Griffith’s Babylon in Intolerance (1916), through the grandiose Romes of the Hollywood epic heyday, and down to the present crop of CGI Troys, Alexandrias, and more, the urban landscape has been an ideal vehicle for the spectacular display on which such films heavily depend. But the cinematic city is not simply a source of visual pleasure. It also reveals a great deal about how popular culture receives antiquity, and the ways in which interpretations of the past evolve over time. This paper focuses on the recent Pompeii in order to address two key questions: firstly, what kinds of aesthetics govern 21st century screen versions of the ancient city, and how do they relate to earlier traditions? And secondly, how has the digital age affected depictions of these cinematic cities, and the interpretations of the ancient world that they represent? In considering these questions, my paper will explore such issues as: the narrative and cinematographic tropes that characterise cinematic ancient cities; these cities' relationship to other versions of the ancient city, especially digital reconstructions; and the distinctive ways in which these 21st century cinematic ancient cities offer moviegoers a position on the ‘balcony of history’ (Barthes). Full details	Add event
24 November 2016	16:30	'The science of fiction: knowledge, competitiveness and expertise in Late-Antique heresiology.' - Dr Richard Flower This paper will explore a group of texts that might not, on first encounter, seem particularly 'scientific' (or even to belong in a Classics department): late-antique polemical catalogues of Christian heresies, usually referred to as heresiologies. These writings, which enjoyed great popularity from the late fourth century onwards, listed different groups of people - some real, some extinct, some fictional - but all regarded by the authors as threats to the faithful. Despite the tendentious and questionable nature of some of the information they contained, however, heresiologies deserve, in my opinion, to be considered alongside other forms of 'technical' and encyclopaedic literature from the ancient world, including the works of Pliny the Elder and Galen. This paper will explore how heresiologists, especially Epiphanius, the late-fourth-century bishop of Salamis on Cyprus, engaged with the methods and traditions of classical technical writings in order to present their texts are part of a secure and uncontentious field of knowledge and to portray themselves as reliable and authoritative experts in this field. It will also examine how, as the genre of heresiology developed, different writers actively sought to position themselves within its literary tradition and to compete with their predecessors and contemporaries for primacy and status. Full details	Add event
17 November 2016	16:30	‘How to read a Roman portrait”? Optatian, Constantine and the uultus imperii.' - Dr Michael Squire (KCL) This seminar explores the theme of ‘reading Roman portraiture’ (in Sheldon Nodelman’s classic phrase). It does so, however, with a view to to one of antiquity's greatest – and most conspicuously overlooked – ‘picture-poets’: Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius (active in the first decades of the fourth century A.D., and writing Latin poems addressed to the emperor Constantine). After a brief introduction to Optatian and his oeuvre, the seminar will concentrate on just one particular case study: a gridded picture-poem (carmen cancellatum) that promises to craft within its verses the materialized face of Constantine (fingere… uultus Augusti), and in such a way as to outstrip antiquity’s most celebrated painter (uincere Apelleas audebit pagina ceras). In this gridded poem, the individual letters of Optatian’s words purport to visualize the countenance of the emperor: we come face-to-face with a portrait that lends itself to (literally!) literal ‘reading’. But how should we make sense of the schematic form of Optatian’s image? What does the poem reveal about contemporary notions of portraiture? And how should we make sense of Optatian’s abiding fascination with the respective limits of ‘seeing’ and ‘reading’?. Full details	Add event
10 November 2016	16:30	'The birth of the medieval dragon.’ - Professor Daniel Ogden Greek and Roman myth was full of marauding fiery dragons (drakontes, dracones): the Hydra, slain by Heracles; Python of Delphi, slain by Apollo; and the Serpent of Ares, slain by Cadmus, amongst many others. Their physical form was fundamentally that of an enormous, coiling snake (famously a multi-headed one in the Hydra’s case). What we might term the ‘medieval’ or ‘Romanesque’ dragon –the dragon that thrives still in the modern western imagination – exhibits a similar pattern of behaviour, but has a rather different physical form. It remains fundamentally a serpent, but it boasts a fatter body, wings, legs and an animalian head. By what stages, by what processes and for what reasons did the snake-dragons of Classical Antiquity mutate into the more elaborate creatures we know – and love – today?. Full details	Add event
3 November 2016	16:30	‘Tragedy and the narratology of dreaming.’ - Dr Nick Lowe (RHUL) Tragedy is the product of a culture with a deep established interest, and investment, in the poetics of dreaming, manifest not just in the prominence of dreams within the texts (and in the epic and lyric material tragedy sets out to repurpose in its new, radically experiential mode) but also, I want to suggest, in some of the most distinctive features of the genre’s own narrative poetics and thematics. The idea that the poetics of narrative mimesis may themselves be founded in the narratology of dreaming is one that has mainly been floated in connection with film (most prominently by Suzanne Langer and Colin McGinn); but the late Bert States argued in a series of thought-provoking publications that theatre, not least Greek tragedy, is if anything even more deeply indebted to the cognitive mechanics of dream narrative. Existing studies of ancient dreaming have been mainly concerned with the cultural history of dreaming, its theory and interpretation, often within a legacy Freudian framework, and only incidentally engaging with current developments in sleep science and the neuropsychology of the dreaming mind, let alone the implications of this work for more fundamental questions in narrative cognition. But a key feature of current neurochemical models of dreaming is that narratogenic functions of waking consciousness are active, even heightened, while others (particularly those involved with working memory and judgment) are radically inhibited, in ways that map turn out to map strikingly on to some of the distinctive features of tragic mimesis. And just as it is possible to argue that the poetics of film, especially popular film, are evolving in the direction of an ever closer approximation to the narrative poetics of dream, I want to make the case that one of the drivers of tragedy’s own evolution, and one of the factors in tragedy’s persistent transcultural reach and power, is an exploration of theatre’s power to simulate and thematise cognitively salient aspects of dream experience. Full details	Add event
27 October 2016	16:30	‘"Masques de fer:” the face of Rome on the Northern Frontier.’ - Dr Shelley Hales (Bristol) In the mid first century a man’s ashes were buried in the territory of the Treveri, in the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. They were rediscovered in 1853 as a result of excavations near the village of Hellange in Luxembourg. Although buried in a manner of ‘local’ custom, his grave goods included several pieces of Roman glassware and a metal face mask, which is now identified as belonging to a type of Roman cavalry helmet introduced during the Augustan period. Earliest reports identified the Hellange man as a Druid whilst, in the 1970s, it was suggested that the presence of a Roman mask in a burial, which seems to be ‘Celtic’, must imply that it was obtained from Roman troops by illicit means. The burial is not unique, several others from Treveran and neighbouring tribal territories also feature cremations accompanied by face masks, burials which are now believed to belong to veterans of the auxiliary units recruited locally by the Roman army to serve in the Rhineland at the beginning of the principate. Full details	Add event
20 October 2016	16:30	‘Exeter’s first urban community in its European setting. A local perspective on mobile objects and cultural mélange in the early Roman West.’ - Dr Martin Pitts Exeter’s origins as a fortress established by Legio II Augusta in the 50s AD are relatively well-known. The spectacular bath-house located beneath Cathedral Green was built to fulfil the needs of the soldiers stationed here (assumed to be of Italian origin), only to be demolished after the troops moved on c. 20 years later and the civilian city was established. Since the Roman army tends to be viewed as a somewhat homogenous entity in much modern scholarship, little attention has been given to understanding the range of cultural influences acting on a community such as this in Roman Britain. With particular emphasis on a couple of well-furnished ‘legionary graves’ from Exeter’s fortress phase, this paper will attempt to put Exeter’s first community into a much wider European context through a comparison of contemporary material culture and grave assemblages from a wider area spanning the territories of Belgica, S. Britannia and Germania Inferior. Can soldier-graves really be identified? What can mass-produced objects reveal about shared cultural imaginations in the early Roman West?. Full details	Add event
13 October 2016	16:30	Destiny's child: Hermione in Colluthus' Abduction of Helen - Marcelina Gilka (PhD, Exeter) Around 500 AD Colluthus of Lycopolis (in Egypt) wrote a short epic poem entitled The Abduction of Helen, treating the mythical events which ultimately lead to the Trojan War. Towards the end of the piece he introduces Helen's little daughter Hermione and dedicates a significant portion of the text to her lament after she has discovered her mother's elopement. This is a great innovation by the poet, as that particular part of the story had not received such detailed attention from any previous author. My paper is going to give a close reading of the relevant passage and attempt a cultural-historical interpretation. Full details	Add event
5 October 2016	17:00	Thucydides and the First World War - Professor Neville Morley Professor Neville Morley gives a Classical Association (South West branch) lecture on Thucydides and the First World War. Full details	Add event
13 January 2016	14:30	Centre for Connectivity in the Roman World: Research in progress meeting Lena and Martin will speak on some of the challenges faced in their current research on human mobility in pre-Imperial Italy, and circulating objects in Iron Age to Roman northern Europe, respectively. Full details	Add event
2 December 2015	16:30	Prof. Maria Wyke (UCL) Ancient Rome in silent cinema Our weekly research seminars cover a wide range of topics within the literature, history, art, archaeology, society and culture of the ancient world. Papers are given by members of the Department or by visiting scholars, in front of a large and friendly audience mostly consisting of staff and postgraduate students, though everybody is welcome to attend and admission is free. The papers are followed (or punctuated) by informal discussion, and refreshments are served afterwards. For further information, directions etc., please contact Prof. Matthew Wright (m.wright@ex.ac.uk). This list also includes lectures arranged by the Classical Association: these are aimed not just at scholars but also at a wider audience including students, pupils at local schools, and members of the general public. For further information on CA lectures and other events, please contact Prof. Lynette Mitchell (l.g.mitchell@ex.ac.uk).. Full details	Add event
25 November 2015	16:30	Dr David Fearn (Warwick) Ecphrastic politics in Pindar, Pythian One Our weekly research seminars cover a wide range of topics within the literature, history, art, archaeology, society and culture of the ancient world. Papers are given by members of the Department or by visiting scholars, in front of a large and friendly audience mostly consisting of staff and postgraduate students, though everybody is welcome to attend and admission is free. The papers are followed (or punctuated) by informal discussion, and refreshments are served afterwards. For further information, directions etc., please contact Prof. Matthew Wright (m.wright@ex.ac.uk). This list also includes lectures arranged by the Classical Association: these are aimed not just at scholars but also at a wider audience including students, pupils at local schools, and members of the general public. For further information on CA lectures and other events, please contact Prof. Lynette Mitchell (l.g.mitchell@ex.ac.uk).. Full details	Add event
18 November 2015	16:30	Dr Maria Fragoulaki (Cardiff) Flexibility, fluidity and authorial agency: ethnicity in Thucydides Our weekly research seminars cover a wide range of topics within the literature, history, art, archaeology, society and culture of the ancient world. Papers are given by members of the Department or by visiting scholars, in front of a large and friendly audience mostly consisting of staff and postgraduate students, though everybody is welcome to attend and admission is free. The papers are followed (or punctuated) by informal discussion, and refreshments are served afterwards. For further information, directions etc., please contact Prof. Matthew Wright (m.wright@ex.ac.uk). This list also includes lectures arranged by the Classical Association: these are aimed not just at scholars but also at a wider audience including students, pupils at local schools, and members of the general public. For further information on CA lectures and other events, please contact Prof. Lynette Mitchell (l.g.mitchell@ex.ac.uk).. Full details	Add event
11 November 2015	16:30	Prof. John Wilkins (Exeter) Galen on the relationship between fish and human beings Our weekly research seminars cover a wide range of topics within the literature, history, art, archaeology, society and culture of the ancient world. Papers are given by members of the Department or by visiting scholars, in front of a large and friendly audience mostly consisting of staff and postgraduate students, though everybody is welcome to attend and admission is free. The papers are followed (or punctuated) by informal discussion, and refreshments are served afterwards. For further information, directions etc., please contact Prof. Matthew Wright (m.wright@ex.ac.uk). This list also includes lectures arranged by the Classical Association: these are aimed not just at scholars but also at a wider audience including students, pupils at local schools, and members of the general public. For further information on CA lectures and other events, please contact Prof. Lynette Mitchell (l.g.mitchell@ex.ac.uk).. Full details	Add event
4 November 2015	16:30	Dr Kurt Lampe (Bristol) Orestes and the tragicomedy of agency Our weekly research seminars cover a wide range of topics within the literature, history, art, archaeology, society and culture of the ancient world. Papers are given by members of the Department or by visiting scholars, in front of a large and friendly audience mostly consisting of staff and postgraduate students, though everybody is welcome to attend and admission is free. The papers are followed (or punctuated) by informal discussion, and refreshments are served afterwards. For further information, directions etc., please contact Prof. Matthew Wright (m.wright@ex.ac.uk). This list also includes lectures arranged by the Classical Association: these are aimed not just at scholars but also at a wider audience including students, pupils at local schools, and members of the general public. For further information on CA lectures and other events, please contact Prof. Lynette Mitchell (l.g.mitchell@ex.ac.uk).. Full details	Add event
21 October 2015	16:30	Dr Claire Holleran (Exeter) Migration in Roman Spain Our weekly research seminars cover a wide range of topics within the literature, history, art, archaeology, society and culture of the ancient world. Papers are given by members of the Department or by visiting scholars, in front of a large and friendly audience mostly consisting of staff and postgraduate students, though everybody is welcome to attend and admission is free. The papers are followed (or punctuated) by informal discussion, and refreshments are served afterwards. For further information, directions etc., please contact Prof. Matthew Wright (m.wright@ex.ac.uk). This list also includes lectures arranged by the Classical Association: these are aimed not just at scholars but also at a wider audience including students, pupils at local schools, and members of the general public. For further information on CA lectures and other events, please contact Prof. Lynette Mitchell (l.g.mitchell@ex.ac.uk).. Full details	Add event
14 October 2015	16:30	Dr Paola Bassino (Exeter) Marcus Musurus, reader of the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi Our weekly research seminars cover a wide range of topics within the literature, history, art, archaeology, society and culture of the ancient world. Papers are given by members of the Department or by visiting scholars, in front of a large and friendly audience mostly consisting of staff and postgraduate students, though everybody is welcome to attend and admission is free. The papers are followed (or punctuated) by informal discussion, and refreshments are served afterwards. For further information, directions etc., please contact Prof. Matthew Wright (m.wright@ex.ac.uk). This list also includes lectures arranged by the Classical Association: these are aimed not just at scholars but also at a wider audience including students, pupils at local schools, and members of the general public. For further information on CA lectures and other events, please contact Prof. Lynette Mitchell (l.g.mitchell@ex.ac.uk).. Full details	Add event
7 October 2015	16:30	Prof. Peter Wiseman (Exeter) Augustus and the Roman people Our weekly research seminars cover a wide range of topics within the literature, history, art, archaeology, society and culture of the ancient world. Papers are given by members of the Department or by visiting scholars, in front of a large and friendly audience mostly consisting of staff and postgraduate students, though everybody is welcome to attend and admission is free. The papers are followed (or punctuated) by informal discussion, and refreshments are served afterwards. For further information, directions etc., please contact Prof. Matthew Wright (m.wright@ex.ac.uk). This list also includes lectures arranged by the Classical Association: these are aimed not just at scholars but also at a wider audience including students, pupils at local schools, and members of the general public. For further information on CA lectures and other events, please contact Prof. Lynette Mitchell (l.g.mitchell@ex.ac.uk).. Full details	Add event
30 September 2015	16:30	Prof. Robin Osborne (Cambridge) The power of images in classical Athens Our weekly research seminars cover a wide range of topics within the literature, history, art, archaeology, society and culture of the ancient world. Papers are given by members of the Department or by visiting scholars, in front of a large and friendly audience mostly consisting of staff and postgraduate students, though everybody is welcome to attend and admission is free. The papers are followed (or punctuated) by informal discussion, and refreshments are served afterwards. For further information, directions etc., please contact Prof. Matthew Wright (m.wright@ex.ac.uk). This list also includes lectures arranged by the Classical Association: these are aimed not just at scholars but also at a wider audience including students, pupils at local schools, and members of the general public. For further information on CA lectures and other events, please contact Prof. Lynette Mitchell (l.g.mitchell@ex.ac.uk).. Full details	Add event
23 September 2015	16:30	Dr Bill Allan (Oxford) Solon and the rhetoric of stasis Our weekly research seminars cover a wide range of topics within the literature, history, art, archaeology, society and culture of the ancient world. Papers are given by members of the Department or by visiting scholars, in front of a large and friendly audience mostly consisting of staff and postgraduate students, though everybody is welcome to attend and admission is free. The papers are followed (or punctuated) by informal discussion, and refreshments are served afterwards. For further information, directions etc., please contact Prof. Matthew Wright (m.wright@ex.ac.uk). This list also includes lectures arranged by the Classical Association: these are aimed not just at scholars but also at a wider audience including students, pupils at local schools, and members of the general public. For further information on CA lectures and other events, please contact Prof. Lynette Mitchell (l.g.mitchell@ex.ac.uk).. Full details	Add event
9 - 11 September 2015		Greek Diet, Health, and Medicine in the Roman world This conference will examine the impact of Greek thought on Roman notions of diet, health and medicine from both the literary and archaeological perspectives with the goal of forming a more holistic understanding of the activities taking place to maintain good health amongst both the elite and non-elite members of Roman society. Full details	Add event