Logos: Centre for the Study of Ancient Systems of Knowledge
The Centre
The LOGOS Research Centre was set up in 2001 to develop collaborative research projects into the systems of knowledge by which Greeks and Romans organised their understanding and description of the world.
Members of the Centre bring together expertise, and an impressive research track record, in the study of science and religion, of legal, mathematical, aesthetic and philosophical modes of thought, and in historiographical and hermeneutic traditions of writing. A special focus of common interest is the means by which writing and the production of texts were employed to create elaborate intellectual systems in antiquity. Alongside our philological concerns with texts of this kind, we are also committed to situating these systems of knowledge in relation to systems of power. Some of us are currently at work on projects explicitly exploring the relationships between ancient imperialisms and ancient thought. Others are engaged on research on complex philosophical and quasi-philosophical texts. The Centre is designed to foster closer collaboration between these activities, and sponsor new initiatives.
The Centre is based in the School of Classics with the participation of academic staff from Divinity, English, History and Philosophy, together with members of other Schools whose interests include the ancient world.
The Centre's activity has recently been focused on two projects in particular, outlined in more detail below. In addition, we are currently developing a number of new projects, including one on the relationship between late-Republican/Augustan and imperial Greek literature (a conference is in the early stages of preparation for September 2013); and another on early Christian compilatory literature. A conference on 'ancient cosmologies' is planned for November 2012.
Science and Empire in the Roman World
Dr. Jason König and Prof. Greg Woolf have directed a three-year research project, generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust, on the relationship between scientific enterprise and imperialism during the Roman Empire. That project finished in September 2010.
A massive scientific literature survives from the Roman period. Composed in both Greek and Latin, it encompasses what are today regarded as many different genres among them works variously classified as miscellanistic, encyclopedic, biographical, philosophical, scientific, didactic, medical, technical and historical. A central preoccupation of the age was how best to order knowledge through text. Much of this writing, and the emergent intellectual disciplines and scientific practices which lay behind it, were influenced to some degree by the imperial structures through which the human and material world was governed, and the civic structures within which most scholars lived. Rhetorical education, the agonistic competition of ancient elite members, the all pervasive awareness of hierarchies and of genealogy are written deep into all these texts. Empire created libraries and enabled a new intellectual cosmopolitanism and imperial conquest brought back new information and specimens from the ends of the earth. Ancient authors were fond of comparing their works to empire in terms of their comprehensive reach and power to outdo their predecessors. Tracing the interconnections between colonialism and intellectual acquisitiveness, between imperial order and the ordering of the natural world and between social values and scientific practice has long been a preoccupation of the history of science of more recent imperial periods.
The Trust's grant made possible a series of meetings and conferences. Three project volumes are now in preparation, one on 'Encyclopaedias and Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance' (forthcoming 2013), one on 'Ancient Libraries' (forthcoming 2013), and one on 'Expertise and Authority in Roman Imperial literature and culture' (in preparation).
Project website: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/classics/science-and-empire/
Plato in the Stoa
A research project coordinated by Alex Long on Plato's legacy in Stoicism. This project explores responses to Plato in Stoic writing and thought from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius. Two workshops in 2008-9 were funded by the British Academy and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies:
- Saturday 9 May 2009 - Plato’s Timaeus and its legacy
- Saturday 6 September 2008 - Plato’s legacy in Stoicism
A volume of essays is currently in preparation.
Publications
Authority and Expertise in the Roman World
Koenig, J. P. (ed.)
,
Woolf, G. (ed.)
&
Oikonomopoulou, K. (ed.)
2014
Unknown Publisher
.
Research output
:
Book/Report
›
Book
Greek Miscellanistic Writing in the High Roman Empire
Oikonomopoulou, K.
2013
Unknown Publisher
.
Research output
:
Book/Report
›
Book
Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance
Woolf, G. D. (ed.)
&
Koenig, J. P. (ed.)
2013
Cambridge University Press
.
Research output
:
Book/Report
›
Book
Ancient Libraries
Koenig, J. P. (ed.)
, Oikonomopoulou, K. (ed.) &
Woolf, G. D. (ed.)
2013
Cambridge University Press
.
Research output
:
Book/Report
›
Book
The Philosopher's Banquet: Plutarch's Table Talk in the Intellectual Culture of the Roman Empire
Oikonomopoulou, K. (ed.)
& Klotz, F. (ed.)
2011
Oxford University Press
.
Research output
:
Book/Report
›
Book
Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West
Woolf, G. D.
2011
Wiley-Blackwell
.
167 p.
(Blackwell Bristol Lectures on Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition).
Research output
:
Book/Report
›
Book
Scientific encyclopedias
Oikonomopoulou, K.
2014
In:
Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science, Technology, and Medicine.
Kirby, G. L. (ed.).
Wiley-Blackwell
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Chapter
Plutarch’s corpus of Quaestiones in the tradition of imperial Greek encyclopaedism
Oikonomopoulou, K.
2013
In:
Encyclopaedias and Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance.
Woolf, G. & König, J. (eds.).
Cambridge University Press
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Chapter
Plutarch at the symposium
Oikonomopoulou, K.
2012
In:
The Cambridge Companion to Plutarch.
Titchener, F. & Zadorozhnyy, A. (eds.).
Cambridge University Press
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Chapter
Rhetoricians on Homer: the ἀντινομικὸν ζήτημα of Plutarch’s Quaestiones Convivales 9.13
Oikonomopoulou, K.
2012
In:
Homère Rhétorique. Études de Réception Antique.
Dubel, S., Favreau-Linder, A-M. & Oudot, E. (eds.).
Editions Rue d’Ulm
, (Etudes de Littérature Ancienne).
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Chapter
Reading and Religion in Rome
Woolf, G. D.
2012
In:
Reflections on Religious Individuality: Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian Texts and Practices.
Rüpke, J. & Spickermann, W. (eds.). Berlin:
De Gruyter
,
p. 193-208.
(Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten).
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Other contribution
Ethography and Authorial Voice in Athenaeus 'Deipnosophistae'
Oikonomopoulou, K.
2012
In:
Ancient Ethnography: New Approaches.
Almagor, E. & Skinner, J. (eds.).
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Chapter
Conventions of prefatory self-presentation in Galen's
On the Order of my Own Books
Konig, J. P.
Dec-2009
In:
Galen and the World of Knowledge.
Gill, C., Wilkins, J. & Whitmarsh, T. (eds.). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
,
p. 35-58.
24 p.
(Greek Culture in the Roman World).
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Chapter
Subjectivity and Objectivity in Latin Scientific and Technical Writing
Hine, H. M.
2009
In:
Authorial Voices in Greco-Roman Technical Writing.
Taub, L. & Doody, A. (eds.). Trier:
WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier
,
p. 13-30.
18 p.
(Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption, AKAN-Einzelschriften).
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Chapter
From Architect to
Imperator
: Vitruvius and his Addressee in the
De Architectura
Konig, A. R.
2009
In:
Authorial Voices in Greco-Roman Technical Writing.
Taub, L. & Doody, A. (eds.).
WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier
,
Vol. 7
,
p. 31-52.
(Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption AKAN-Einzelschriften).
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Chapter
Astronomy and Philosophical Orientation in Classical and Renaissance Didactic Poetry
Gee, E. R. G.
2008
In:
What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in the Medieval and Early-Modern Period.
Ruys, J. (ed.).
Brepols
,
p. 473-496.
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Chapter
Sympotic dialogue in the first to fifth centuries CE
Konig, J. P.
2008
In:
The End of Dialogue in Antiquity.
Goldhill, S. (ed.). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
,
p. 85-113.
29 p.
Research output
:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
›
Chapter
Frontinus' Authorial Voice under Domitian, Nerva and Trajan
Konig, A. R.
20-Dec-2012
p. 1-21.
21 p.
(Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature; 3).
Research output
:
Working paper
Aelianus Tacticus in dialogue with Frontinus and Trajan
Konig, A. R.
27-Nov-2012
p. 1-11.
11 p.
(Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature; 2).
Research output
:
Working paper
Library Building under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian
Konig, A. R.
18-Nov-2012
p. 1-14.
14 p.
(Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature; 1).
Research output
:
Working paper
Frontinus: Roman author and statesman (podcast)
Konig, A. R.
Dec-2012
Research output
:
Non-textual form
›
Digital or Visual Products
Literary Interactions under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian (podcast)
Konig, A. R.
Nov-2012
Research output
:
Non-textual form
›
Digital or Visual Products
Latin Language Teaching and the Student Experience
Konig, A. R.
,
Buckley, E. L.
& Woodcock Kroble, M. L.
1-Oct-2012
Research output
:
Non-textual form
›
Web publication/site
Literary Interactions under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian (website)
Konig, A. R.
& Woodcock Kroble, M. L.
1-Oct-2012
Research output
:
Non-textual form
›
Web publication/site
Forthcoming and recent events
- Friday 2 – Sunday 4 November 2012: 'Ancient Cosmologies' (jointly organised by Sarah Broadie, Alex Long and Karla Pollmann)
- Monday 13 June 2011: Solinus in the Twenty-First Century (a one-day workshop in the School of Classics jointly organised by Greg Woolf, Joe Howley and Felix Racine)
Dr Jason König
Director of Logos, School of Classics, University of St Andrews, Swallowgate, Butts Wynd, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AL.
e-mail: jpk3@st-andrews.ac.uk