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Events

Research events play an important role in our active research culture. Academic staff from the University and other institutions come together with students to share and debate the latest ideas and developments.

When	Time	Description	Add to your calendar
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
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
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
12 December 2018	17:00	CA Lecture: Dr Kathryn Tempest (Roehampton) "The Art of Faking It: The Letters of Marcus Brutus and Mithridates" CA Lecture at Exeter College. 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. In this connection, attention will be paid to the Greek letters of Brutus: a collection of seventy short letters, thirty-five of them allegedly written by the tyrannicide, as he issued demands for resources in the province of Asia and within Lycia. Although they were admired in antiquity for their brevity and forcefulness, modern discussions have focused instead on issues of authenticity and authorship. Erasmus first doubted Brutus’ authorship of the Greek letters in 1520 (see Achelis 1917/18); this speculation was further fuelled by the celebrated dissertation of Bentley (1697), who illuminated the authorial practice of impersonating great figures from antiquity. Although Bentley was concerned with the letters of Phalaris, and not Brutus, the implications of his findings were vast. While some scholars have defended the attribution of the letters to Brutus (Rühl 1915; Goukowsky 2011; Jones 2015), historical errors and inconsistencies have led others to dismiss the collection as a forgery, either in full (Marcks 1883; Rawson 1986; Moles 1997) or in part (Westermann 1851; Smith 1936; Torraco 1959). It is perhaps unfortunate that previous scholarship has focused almost exclusively on the question of Brutus’ real or feigned authorship; that is, on one half of the collection only. For, as I discuss in this paper, an introductory letter written by the compiler of the collection – an otherwise unidentified Mithridates – explains that he personally composed the other thirty-five letters as imaginary responses, because his nephew had wanted to know how the cities might have replied to Brutus’ repeated demands for money and military support. This explanation of the collection’s didactic function, I argue, coupled with a close examination of the contents of the letters does much to reveal their interest in rhetorical argumentation, and especially the dilemma form. But the cover letter of Mithridates also does something more than that; in reflecting on the art of composing his replies, the author takes his reader into the world of the fake letter writer, where he presents his work as both a scholar and a creative artist. 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
30 January 2019	16:30	Dr Kathryn Stevens (Durham) - TBC Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
13 February 2019	16:30	Prof. Hans Van Wees (KCL) - TBC Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
20 February 2019	16:30	Prof. Martin Revermann - TBC Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
27 February 2019	16:30	Dr Jeroen Wijnendaele (Ghent) - TBC Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. 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
20 March 2019	17:00	CA Lecture: Prof. Greg Woolf (ICS) - TBC CA Lecture, Exeter College. Full details	Add event
27 March 2019	16:30	Prof. Catherine M. Connors (Washington) "Notes from underground: Geology and Revelation in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica" Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. In his expansive and adventurous novel the Aethiopica, Heliodorus makes extensive use of vocabulary and motifs of geological and geographical discourse about rivers, caves and other natural features. Ancient discussions of geology and geography preserved in Strabo, Seneca’s Natural Questions, and elsewhere consider how the visible world is related to and shaped by physical processes that are not always visible to an observer’s eye, and this kind of thinking is a robust part of discussions of the underworld in antiquity. Heliodorus’ extensive use of geological and geographical knowledge throughout his narrative invites readers to measure the analytical techniques developed for thinking about the relation of the visible to the invisible against his own tale of concealment, death-defying ordeals, and revelation.. Full details	Add event
1 May 2019	17:00	CA Lecture: Matt Bryden - "Lost and Found" CA Lecture at Exeter College. Poetry reading + Q&A. Full details	Add event
8 May 2019	16:30	Prof. Emily Gowers (Cambridge) - TBC Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. Full details	Add event
13 May 2019	16:30	Prof. Douglas Cairns (Edinburgh) - TBC Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar. Full details	Add event