Visualising War podcast

How do war stories work? And what do they do to us? Tune in to the Visualising War project’s new podcast to find out! Led by Drs Alice König and Nicolas Wiater, Visualising War is an interdisciplinary research project based in the School of Classics. It looks at how war gets represented in art, text,…

Oros: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture

Speaker: Professor Jason König On 4th November 2015, Professor Jason König presented his Inaugural lecture entitled Oros: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture to a packed audience. Deputy Principal Professor Garry Taylor introduced the lecture with some remarks on Jason’s world-leading scholarship to date and his exemplary leadership as the School’s Director of Research…

Morality, Politics and Religion in Euripidean Tragedy

Speaker: Jon Hesk In this lecture Jon Hesk argues that Euripides’ plays are not, as is sometimes thought, radical critiques of religious practice and belief.  Rather, they stage the difficulty of moral, social and political decision-making in a world where external forces are ineluctable (and yet often hard to detect), stakes are high (and yet…

Politics and gender conflict in Greek drama

Speaker: Dr Jon Hesk In this recording of a lecture, Jon Hesk discusses Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Euripides’ Medea and Sophocles’ Antigone.  He shows how these plays’  representations of their female protagonists provided Athenian men with important food for thought concerning their own roles and responsibilities within the city and the household.  In the case of Aristophanes, however, we have to…

Plato and Conversation

Speaker: Dr Alex Long Alex Long talks about Plato’s dialogues and their representation of philosophy. In Plato’s dialogues Socrates engages his interlocutors (sophists, philosophers and his young admirers) in exchanges of short questions and answers. Plato considers why this interpersonal exchange is advantageous in inquiry and in teaching, and how it can be adapted in…

Symposium literature in the Roman Empire

Speaker: Dr Jason König Jason König discusses his new book Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2012). He talks about a series of imperial Greek and early Christian texts which reshape the tradition of intellectual conversation in drinking-party settings—a tradition which stretches back to…

Frontinus: Roman author and statesman

Speaker: Dr Alice König Alice König introduces the book she is writing on the Roman author and statesman Sextus Julius Frontinus – with a little help from the crime novelist Lindsey Davis. Her book, “Frontinus’ ‘Technical’ Treatises in Close-up and in Context” is due to be published by CUP, and her research is being supported…

Olympics in the Roman Empire

Speaker: Dr Jason König Jason König discusses the ancient Olympics in the wider context of the Greek athletics of the Roman Empire. For more, see Dr König’s blog ‘Ancient and Modern Olympics‘; also his books Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Greek Athletics(Edinburgh University Press, 2010; in paperback from 2013).

Trajan’s column: Introduction

Speaker: Dr Jon Coulston Jon Coulston presents his research on Trajan’s Column in Rome (dedicated in AD 113). This monument’s remarkable state of preservation may be ascribed to its architectural design, its placement on solid ground (rather than on the alluvium of the Flavian Amphitheatre or the Column of Marcus Aurelius), the splendour of its…

Literary interactions under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian

Speaker: Dr Alice König Alice König outlines her British Academy/Leverhulme-funded research project on Literary Interactions under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian . She sets out the various authors and issues that the project will examine, and some of the ways in which different contributors will get involved. She also gives a flavour of what the project is designed…

Lies and Broken Promises in Classical Athens and Modern Democracies

Speaker: Dr Jon Hesk Jon Hesk discusses the ways in which the Athenian democracy was able to bring its politicians and officials to account for telling lies or going back on their promises.  It turns out that procedure and practice were two very different things and the question of whether we should apply Athenian procedures…

Ethnography in the ancient world

Speaker: Professor Greg Woolf Greg Woolf discusses his book, Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West (Blackwell 2011). He talks about how the encounters between Greeks, Romans and  local populations created an entirely new mythology of empire in the Roman Wild West. Travelling scholars teaching Greek to local chiefs or moving in the…