Symposium literature in the Roman Empire

Dr Jason König

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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 classical texts like Plato's Symposium—focusing especially on Plutarch's Sympotic Questions. He also discusses the changing uses of scenes of grotesque eating and drinking in both Greco-Roman and early Christian narrative.

 

Frontinus: Roman author and statesman

Dr Alice König

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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 by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship.

Some of her other publications on Frontinus include: A. König (2007), ‘Knowledge and power in Frontinus’ On Aqueducts’, in J. König and T. Whitmarsh (ed.), Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire (Cambridge): 177-205; A. König (2013) ‘Frontinus’ Cameo Role in Tacitus’ Agricola’, Classical Quarterly (forthcoming); A. König (forthcoming), ‘Authorial presence and absence in Frontinus’ Strategemata’ (to be published in J. König and G. Woolf (ed.) Expertise and Authority in the Roman World).

 

Olympics in the Roman Empire

Dr Jason König

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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' (updated monthly); 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

Trajan's column: Introduction

Dr Jon Coulston

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Jon Coulston presents the first in a series of podcasts featuring 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 sculptures, and the value of its viewing balcony as a money-making asset in the pilgrim/tourist trade. The Column pedestal bore reliefs of 600 items of captured barbarian equipment, and the dedicatory inscription which is accounted the finest manifestation of Roman epigraphic art. Sculptures depicting Trajan’s Dacian Wars on a helical frieze running up the Column shaft include 2650 human figures in fantastically minute detail, down to belt-buckles and finger-nails. These features have been recorded and spatially plotted to reveal the practicalities of planning, composition and execution. Together, the architectural design and triumphal sculptural display mark Trajan’s Column as one of the most magnificent monuments to survive from Antiquity, one which has cast a long shadow across the modern world. The podcasts introduce the subject in conjunction with a forthcoming monograph publication and the soon to be launched Trajan’s Column Online Project.

 

Literary interactions under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian

Dr Alice König

Flash Player is required for the embedded audio player. Download: Podcast - Literary interactions under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian (MP3, 8,677 KB) 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 to achieve by sketching some literary interactions between the Roman author Frontinus and some of his contemporary writers. The research project will result in at least one edited volume and a series of Working Papers will also be published regularly on the project’s website. For more on Frontinus specifically, see A. König (2013), Frontinus’ Cameo Role in Tacitus’ Agricola, Classical Quarterly and A. König (forthcoming), Frontinus’ ‘Technical’ Treatises in Close-up and in Context.

 

Lies and Broken Promises in Classical Athens and Modern Democracies

Dr Jon Hesk

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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 and sanctions to modern democratic politics is more complex than is often assumed. For more, see Dr Hesk's book Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens (Cambridge University Press 2000).

 

Ethnography in the ancient world

Professor Greg Woolf

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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 retinues of Roman generals, bilingual soldiers campaigning in Darkest Europe or the Atlas Mountains, native scholars discovering classical literature for the first time, all played a part. The new myths of origin they created cannibalised stories from the Homeric poems, military reports, eye-witness accounts of strange monuments and bizarre meteorological phenomena.They supported hypotheses that seem bizarre to us from the evidence of place-names and the physical appearances of different peoples, and from complex theories about the relationship between physical environment and national character. Greek science gave these ideas a shape,  Roman power presided over their creation: but it was the locals who stood to gain the most from the new identities these tales gave them.