Annual Fall Lecture 2024

Roman Graffiti as evidence for crucifixion and its depiction in late antiquity

by Dr. Felicity Harley-McGowan, Yale Divinity School

Join us for a discussion that explores Roman crucifixion and its development into religious iconography.

Crucifixion played an important role in the Roman criminal justice system, with large numbers of people executed in this way during uprisings and otherwise. Literary sources offer no clarity about how these executions were carried out, archaeological evidence is rare, and pictorial evidence almost absent. This lecture discusses one of only two images of a crucified victim to survive from the Roman world: a graffito from the 2nd century AD, excavated in Southern Italy in 1959. The image preserves important evidence both of the practice of crucifixion by the Romans in the first centuries AD and for the graduation development of an iconography of crucifixion in Roman, and subsequently Christian, art.

Light refreshments will be served. Please share the flyer.

Annual Spring Lecture 2024

Join us for a talk by Dr. Peter De Staebler of Pratt Institute who will deliver our Spring Lecture,

Monolithic Columns and Empire in Roman Architecture.

Our lecture will include a reception and Q & A session with our guest speaker. We will also celebrate our contest winners this season including the one for our newest contest, the High School Recitation Contest. Winners will perform their readings and we will hear about how a NYCC Presidential Grant has supported Classics right here in New York City.

We hope to see you on 17 May 2024 at the Brearley School. Please share the flyer widely.

Please submit the following by snail-mail or e-mail to Matthew McGowan (address below) by Friday, April 26th:

1. A completed registration form.

2. A 50-150 word description and rationale for your production.

3. A list of characters and cast members.

Format: *Adapt a scene or scenes from Ovid’s timeless epic of transformation to a 15-20 min. performance.

Objectives: You should aim to entertain and to instruct (cf. Horace, Ars Poetica 333). The best productions will demonstrate an understanding of the original, make it accessible and relevant to a contemporary audience, and offer new insights for all involved. Playful creativity is encouraged!

Rules and Guidelines:

1. Script MUST be ORIGINAL and written by participants, but translations/adaptations may of course be consulted.

2. Performances should run 15-20 MINUTES in total!

3. Space for performance is approximately seventy-five feet by twenty feet.

4. Costumes are optional, but indeed most welcome!

5. Additional set pieces must be supplied by the team, be portable, and be capable of setup / removal in three minutes: less is more

6. The members of each team must consist of students currently registered at the high school on the registration form.

7. The entries will be evaluated by a panel of judges based on the format and objectives outlined above.

8. N.b. Performance should be 15-20 min. total with a maximum of 3 min. setup / breakdown for equipment!

By performing in this contest team members consent to the following conditions: Prizes will be awarded to the team leaders. It is the team leader’s responsibility to distribute the prize to the members of his or her team equitably. Where not otherwise protected by copyright restrictions, student scripts and performances are available for photocopying, videotaping, and all of the other means of electronic reproduction by the New York Classical Club. Please complete registration

FIRST PRIZE: $300.00 SECOND PRIZE: $150.00 THIRD PRIZE: $50.00

This ISAW workshop aims to explore techniques for integrating AI chatbots into the Latin language classroom. Chatbots (ChatGPT, but also Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and others) are having an obvious impact on classrooms around the world.

The discussion in the humanities has so far focused largely on the potential for AI to interfere with learning and assessment. The point of departure for this workshop is different: to leverage the real opportunities this technology represents for Latin pedagogy.

Participants will engage in exercises that model some or all of the following language-learning activities:

• circling and real-time call-response drills in Latin to improve active comprehension

• creating new, graded, and personalized texts on accessible themes in Latin for beginning/intermediate readers

• simplifying and adapting ancient texts for beginning and intermediate readers

• generating prompts and reading comprehension questions

• generating examples and practice sentences using prescribed vocabulary (e.g. from a chapter of a textbook)

• generating images that correspond to text and vice versa No prior experience with AI or chatbots is required.

This workshop is open to anyone who teaches Latin at any level, from elementary school to college. Teachers at public schools can get CTLE credit for attending. Participants must bring a computer and will use a free AI chat interface during the workshop. Participants are encouraged to bring texts that they are currently teaching as well as supporting materials that they wish to adapt further using AI. If you want to attend the workshop, please email Patrick J. Burns at pjb311@nyu.edu before April 18, 2024. Please note that the workshop will be capped at 25 participants.

UNDERGRADUATE TRANSLATION EXAMINATIONS

The New York Classical Club undergraduate Greek and Latin translation examinations will be held Friday April 19, 2024, between 1:30 and 5:00 p.m., in the classics department of New York University, 100 Washington Square East, room 503 (enter from either Waverly Place or Washington Place).  The Greek exam will be given from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m.; the Latin from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. 

Each examination will consist of one prose and one poetry passage appropriate for undergraduates.  Cicero and Virgil are typical authors for the Latin exam;  tragedy and Attic prose are often given in the Greek exam.

REQUIREMENTS: A minimum of 2 years of college Greek and/or Latin (including the current semester) or the equivalent.  The awards are not restricted to Classics majors and are open to all current undergraduates whether or not they are members of the New York Classical Club.  Students may compete in one or both languages, and those who have participated in the past are welcome to do so again.

APPLICATIONS:  Instructors should write a brief letter or email message nominating students and send it to me at the address below. The letter should state that the applicant  is a bona-fide student this term and indicate which of the exams the student wishes to take.  Students should also send a letter directly to David Sider.

DEADLINE:  All faculty nominations and student applications should be received by Wednesday April 17th.

PRIZES:  Cash prizes of $300, $200, and $100 will be awarded to the winners in each exam.  Winners and their instructors will be notified very soon after the exam. The prizes will be awarded at the Club's spring meeting on Friday, April 28th. The Club at its discretion reserves the right to award fewer than three prizes for each examination.

NYU  is easily reached by subway.  100 Washington Square East (entrances on Washington and Waverly Places) is opposite the NE corner of Washington Square Park. Closest subway stops are W. 4th St. (A/B/D/E/F lines), 8th St. (N/R), and Astor Place (6). The Christopher St. stop (1) is also convenient.

                  For more information contact: David Sider (david.sider@nyu.edu)

The New York Classical Club invites you to send your students to this year’s Latin Sight Translation Contest for High School Students and to the first High School Latin Recitation/Reading Contest.

This year’s competitions will be held on Saturday, April 13th from 12:00 PM- 4:00 PM at The Nightingale-Bamford School (20 East 92nd St., between Madison and 5th Ave.) in Manhattan. 

The translation contest will take place from 12:00-1:30 and the recitation/reading contest will follow from 2:00-4:00. Monetary prizes will be awarded to the top three elocutionists in prose and poetry and to the top three translators in each of the five divisions of the competition. 

If you are sending students to the translation contest, please fill out this registration form by Tuesday, April 2nd.  

We ask that you limit your registration to three students per level (thus, a maximum of 15 students per school). The different levels for this competition are:

Caesar– Division I

Cicero– Division II

Ovid– Division III

Vergil– Division IV

Horace– Division V

Please note that all divisions will have appropriate vocabulary help, which we hope will encourage students to participate.  

For the recitation/reading contest, students may choose one of the following passages, for Latin Prose, Sallust's Bellum Catilinae 5 and for Latin Poetry, Virgil's Aeneid 2.199-249.

Please note that students are not required to memorize the passages and are able to read from a script. If you have students participating in the recitation/reading contest, we ask that you fill out this form by Friday, April 12th. If you are bringing students, please volunteer to stay and proctor one of the contests; this year's event promises to be full of memorable moments, and we would so appreciate your presence and help.

Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you and your students at the Latin Sight Translation Contest for High School Students and the inaugural High School Latin Recitation/Reading Contest on Saturday, April 13th at 12:00.

College Oral Reading Contests in Greek and Latin

The deadline for video submissions is April 12, 2024.

Reading Selections are:

Greek: Plato, Symposium 215a4-c8 OR Sappho, poem 1

Latin: Sallust, Catiline 52.7-12 OR Catullus 64.132-148

Contestants may compete for both the Greek and Latin prizes, or for either one. You won’t need to memorize anything; feel free to read from a script. ***NEW*** The competition is open ONLY to undergraduate or graduate students whose primary residence OR university is in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.

For our new high middle and high school competition, see NYCC.

Judges: Lisa Mignone (NYU), Katharina Volk (Columbia University), Kristin Webster (Nightingale-Bamford School).

Art: Culture, Ownership, and Society

Join us for a day-long dialogue about Art and the conversations surrounding its ownership by institutions and individuals in a globally connected world.

The following speakers will join us on Saturday, 27 January 2024, to share their perspectives on this topic from their professional vantage points:

• Erin Thompson (John Jay CUNY)

• Maya Muratov ( Adelphi University)

• Leila Amineddoleh (Amineddoleh & Associates)

• Jennifer Udell (Fordham University)

• Hicham Aboutaam (Phoenix Ancient Art)

• Elizabeth Marlowe (Colgate University)

Light refreshments, lunch, and a reception will be offered. see schedule here

Lastly, we ask that all attendees register in advance. NYU Security requires a list of attendees ahead of time. Attendees who are not registered ahead of time may be denied entry.

This event is co-sponsored by the NYU Classics Department and the NYU Center for Ancient Studies.

Please join us for the Annual Fall Lecture 2023, entitled Roman Spain and the Birth of Empire during the Republic, by Dr. Raymond Capra of Queens College - City University of New York.

Flyer for circulation, please share with your students, colleagues, and other interested parties.

Spring Meeting and Lecture 2023

We invite our members to join us for this meeting, especially those who have participated in the Spring contests and those receiving awards to travel and study abroad.

Dr. Tonglet will discuss Etruscan funerary practices and will address the reconstruction of the human appearance of the deceased. The talk is called Bodies after Burning: Etruscan Cinerary Urns and Anthropomorphism.

Awards will follow.

The Annual Spring High School Classical Theater Contest is a 15-20 minute adaptation of a classical drama. This year it will be based on Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and take place at Fordham Preparatory School's Leonard Theatre on the Fordham University campus in the Bronx.

Contest winners are invited to attend the Annual Spring Meeting and Lecture on May 19, 2023, where the prizes will be awarded. We hope you can attend.

This contest is open to college undergraduate students in the New York City area. Students interested in participating should contact Dr. Sider and register whenever they can.

Contest winners are invited to attend the Annual Spring Meeting and Lecture on May 19, 2023, where the prizes will be awarded. We hope you can attend.

A classicist’s tour of the NY Botanical Garden. This annual event includes an overview of the history of botany from Theophrastus to Linnaeus, readings from Cicero, Vergil, and Pliny, discussion with contemporary botanists, and a visit to the NYBG’s rare book room and herbarium.

Free & student-friendly! Limited space; RSVP required. Wednesday, April 19, 3-5pm (enter via NYBG Mosholu Gate). For info: mamcgowan@fordham.edu

Download Event Flyer here.

This contest is open to High School Students in the New York City area, and students should have their teachers sign them up. If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with Talia Varonos.

Contest winners are invited to attend the Annual Spring Meeting and Lecture on May 19, 2023, where the prizes will be awarded. We hope you can attend.

Monuments & Public Spaces

Expressions of Power & Values Across Time

Our speakers will address the history of physical structures and help us explore the values they project across time and space.

10:00 am - 10:30 am    Registration and Refreshments

10:30am - 10:45am    Welcome

10:45 am - 1:00 pm      Session 1

10:45        Cultural Heritage in Wartime: Alexander the Great as Creator, Destroyer, and Rebuilder of Monuments by Dr. Rachel Kousser

11:30         Making and Using Caves: Classical Athens and the Cult of Pan by Dr. Carolyn Laferriere

12:15          (Sewer?) Crawling Into the Third Century BCE: Appius’ Aqueduct by Dr. Lisa Marie Mignone

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm          Lunch for Registrants

2:00 pm – 5:00 pm                  Session 2

2:00            Architectural Stories: The Vitruvian Myths of the Classical Orders by Megan Goldman-Petri

2:45            Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park: The Aims and Legacy of New York City’s First Diplomatic Archaeological Gift by Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay

3:45 pm                         Coffee Break

4:15           Triumphal Arches, Movement, and Modernity: The Case of Africa’s Italian Colonies by Dr. Francesco de Angelis

5:00 pm                        Wine and Cheese Reception

Sponsored by the New York Classical Club and co-sponsored by the NYU Department of Classics and the Center for Ancient Studies.

Please register for this event below.

Proof of vaccination status is required to attend, and we ask that you register in advance so that your name appears on the guest list at the Silver Center. Thank you for being so cooperative.

Katharina Volk will provide background and context for Vergil and the Aeneid, from which many high school students will have read selections. This talk will help students cultivate a greater appreciation for the Latin epic and offer them a chance to hear from a prolific scholar.

Prof. Katharina Volk teaches at Columbia University and her research interests are Latin literature of the Late Republic and Early Empire, Roman philosophy, and intellectual history. Professor Volk has published on Roman philosophy, politics, poetry, Ovid, and Vergil. Her latest book, The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar (Princeton 2021) explores the politics and sociology of knowledge in late Republican Rome, focusing on the intellectual activities of such learned senators as Cicero, Caesar, Varro, Nigidius Figulus, Cato, Brutus, and Cassius. The book was awarded the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit 2022 by the Society for Classical Studies.

This talk is free and open to all.

Zoom Registration is Required.

Identity and Josephus’ Jewish War will address the relationship between the historian's identity, experience, and the history he tells in Josephus' Jewish War. The talk will include accounts of traumatic experiences and attendees are advised in advance.

Dr. Sarah Teets is a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the University of Virginia College of Arts and Sciences. Her research interests include the imperial-colonial encounter between Rome and Judea, the use of feminist theories in the analysis of ancient texts, trauma and mental health in antiquity, and the reception of Greek and Roman antiquity. Her current research explores Josephus’ relationship to Greek culture in the construction and performance of his identity in Against Apion. She is published in Histos, Eidolon, and the Journal for the Study of Judaism.

This talk is free and open to all.

Zoom Registration is Required.

Join us for a special talk with Philosopher and Classicist, Dr. Carlo DaVia who recently prepared a Guide to Free and Responsible Inquiry (Humanities Classroom), a guide for educators and students alike.

Dr. DaVia’s background in philosophy, Greek, and Latin makes him well-positioned to speak on the challenges of teaching Greek and Latin literature. As a fellow at the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, he produced a Guide to Free and Responsible Inquiry for use in Humanities Classroom. In this talk, Dr. DaVia will address the particular challenges of teaching and reading authors like Ovid and Catullus. 

Dr. DaVia writes:

“We as classicists read, and teach others to read, a number of texts that one might describe as "problematic." The Gallic Wars is an unapologetic story of genocide, the poems of Catullus rife with vulgarity, the Metamorphoses contain over fifty instances of rape, ad nauseam. Let us suppose that we deem at least some of these works worth reading. How can we read them responsibly? I would like, by way of open discussion, to introduce some concepts in moral philosophy that we need to answer such a question.”

This talk is free and open to all.

Attached is the handout for the talk

Zoom registration is required.

Coinage and Literature, two complementary approaches to Roman civilization

By Dr Lucia Carbone

According to Cicero, in 240 BC Livius Andronicus, a Greek freedman from Tarentum, staged his first play in Rome, thus setting the official starting date of Latin Literature. Roughly in the same years, the city of Rome began the production of its own coinage, characterized by Greek-inspired silver coins and traditionally Italian bronze coins and bars. At the same time, Tarentum, Andronicus’ fatherland, adopted for its silver coinage a weight standard compatible to the one adopted by Neaples and, consequently, by Rome. Gnaeus Naevius, a libertus from Campania who probably fought in the First Punic War, was the first one to celebrate the virtus of Roman infantry and the unhappy love of Aeneas and Dido. Both Latin literature and Roman coinage originated in the middle ground between Greek and Roman tradition that characterized the Archaic Age and was at least partly related to Roman military conquest. Since their inception, literature and coinage thus represent two complementary and deeply interrelated heuristic tools to better understand Roman civilization, as they both represent the privileged vectors of the self-representation of the elites. This paper aims to investigate the constant dialogue between literary text and numismatic sources especially in the formative years of the early third century BCE, showing how coinage represents a privileged tool to enhance a more organic understanding of the Roman civilization as a whole.

Our meeting will be held in person at the Brearley School (East 83 and East End Ave) on Friday May 27, 2022. The meeting will run from 4 -5:45 pm. The school kindly asks that visitors show proof of vaccination against COVID (photo, card, app, etc) and complete a health attestation form upon arrival. All visitors to the school are also expected to wear a mask during the lecture.

In place of our usual winter conference, we are offering a winter series on three consecutive Saturdays in February. We are pleased to bring you lectures entitled: Learning about Cicero, Caesar and Vergil via Coins by Dr. Lucia Carbone of the American Numismatic Society. The series will explore the connection between Roman literature and coinage and culminate in our Spring lecture in May.

Dr. Carbone writes:

The Roman historian Fergus Millar once stated that ‘coins are the most deliberate of all symbols of public identity.’ For scholars of the Classical world (and not only), coins are the unsurpassed vectors of self-representation for the elites. Because of their mass-produced nature and widespread circulation, they represent the privileged communication channel between elites and lower classes. The study of coins thus provides a first-hand and unmediated heuristic tool to understand Classical culture, an important complement to the literary approach often adopted in high school.

These three sessions aim to investigate the interaction between literary and non-literary (in this case numismatic) representations of power in the Late Republic and in the Early Empire. These sessions, which could be chosen independently one form the other, will focus on the comparison between Roman coinage and contemporary literary passages from a) Cicero’s Pro Archia Poeta and Pro Lege Manilia (with his representation of Pompey the Great); b) Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum and Bellum Civile and c) Vergil’s Aeneid. The comparison between literary and numismatic sources intends to provide a wider perspective on the ways in which the power of imperatores like Pompey and Caesar and emperors like Augustus was perceived. At the same time, coins issued by their adversaries proposed different and alternative narratives, often obliterated in literary texts. Both in-person and virtual, these workshops will provide access to the incomparable collection of the American Numismatic Society, rich of over 1,000,000 coins, thus enhancing a more organic understanding of the cultural changes that took place in the momentous years of the Late Roman Republic, when a res publica dominated by imperatores became a monarchy under the auctoritas of one emperor.

This lecture will be held over Zoom and attendees need to register one time at the following link.

In place of our usual winter conference, we are offering a winter series on three consecutive Saturdays in February. We are pleased to bring you lectures entitled: Learning about Cicero, Caesar and Vergil via Coins by Dr. Lucia Carbone of the American Numismatic Society. The series will explore the connection between Roman literature and coinage and culminate in our Spring lecture in May.

Dr. Carbone writes:

The Roman historian Fergus Millar once stated that ‘coins are the most deliberate of all symbols of public identity.’ For scholars of the Classical world (and not only), coins are the unsurpassed vectors of self-representation for the elites. Because of their mass-produced nature and widespread circulation, they represent the privileged communication channel between elites and lower classes. The study of coins thus provides a first-hand and unmediated heuristic tool to understand Classical culture, an important complement to the literary approach often adopted in high school.

These three sessions aim to investigate the interaction between literary and non-literary (in this case numismatic) representations of power in the Late Republic and in the Early Empire. These sessions, which could be chosen independently one form the other, will focus on the comparison between Roman coinage and contemporary literary passages from a) Cicero’s Pro Archia Poeta and Pro Lege Manilia (with his representation of Pompey the Great); b) Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum and Bellum Civile and c) Vergil’s Aeneid. The comparison between literary and numismatic sources intends to provide a wider perspective on the ways in which the power of imperatores like Pompey and Caesar and emperors like Augustus was perceived. At the same time, coins issued by their adversaries proposed different and alternative narratives, often obliterated in literary texts. Both in-person and virtual, these workshops will provide access to the incomparable collection of the American Numismatic Society, rich of over 1,000,000 coins, thus enhancing a more organic understanding of the cultural changes that took place in the momentous years of the Late Roman Republic, when a res publica dominated by imperatores became a monarchy under the auctoritas of one emperor.

This lecture will be held over Zoom and attendees need to register one time at the following link.

In place of our usual winter conference, we are offering a winter series on three consecutive Saturdays in February. We are pleased to bring you lectures entitled: Learning about Cicero, Caesar and Vergil via Coins by Dr. Lucia Carbone of the American Numismatic Society. The series will explore the connection between Roman literature and coinage and culminate in our Spring lecture in May.

Dr. Carbone writes:

The Roman historian Fergus Millar once stated that ‘coins are the most deliberate of all symbols of public identity.’ For scholars of the Classical world (and not only), coins are the unsurpassed vectors of self-representation for the elites. Because of their mass-produced nature and widespread circulation, they represent the privileged communication channel between elites and lower classes. The study of coins thus provides a first-hand and unmediated heuristic tool to understand Classical culture, an important complement to the literary approach often adopted in high school.

These three sessions aim to investigate the interaction between literary and non-literary (in this case numismatic) representations of power in the Late Republic and in the Early Empire. These sessions, which could be chosen independently one form the other, will focus on the comparison between Roman coinage and contemporary literary passages from a) Cicero’s Pro Archia Poeta and Pro Lege Manilia (with his representation of Pompey the Great); b) Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum and Bellum Civile and c) Vergil’s Aeneid. The comparison between literary and numismatic sources intends to provide a wider perspective on the ways in which the power of imperatores like Pompey and Caesar and emperors like Augustus was perceived. At the same time, coins issued by their adversaries proposed different and alternative narratives, often obliterated in literary texts. Both in-person and virtual, these workshops will provide access to the incomparable collection of the American Numismatic Society, rich of over 1,000,000 coins, thus enhancing a more organic understanding of the cultural changes that took place in the momentous years of the Late Roman Republic, when a res publica dominated by imperatores became a monarchy under the auctoritas of one emperor.

This lectures will be held over Zoom and attendees need to register one time at the following link.

The New York Classical Club Fall Meeting 2021 welcomes Prof. John Gruber-Miller.

Pre-register here.

Professor John Gruber-Miller of Cornell College will lead this workshop, which will take us through material objects from which we can learn more about how Romans practiced slavery. This workshop aims to challenge the idea of the ‘happy slave.’

Professor Gruber-Miller writes: A number of publications have criticized the motif of the “happy slave” in antiquity.  This workshop is meant to provide a corrective to that representation and take a deeper look at the evidence of how the enslaved experienced “social death” (Patterson).  As Kamen (2010) and Trimble (2016) have pointed out, Roman slaveholders used a variety of ways to mark slaves as property and to stigmatize them as social outcasts—slave collars, brandings, tattoos, and scars.  This workshop will lead participants through a sampling of the textual and visual evidence for inscribing slavery upon the bodies of those enslaved and suggest an approach to explore the radically different perspectives of the slaveholder and the marked slave. Warning: this workshop will view and discuss difficult topics of branding, whipping, and scarring human beings without their consent.

Please register for this Zoom event at the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAucuCrrz0tHdLPzb1DvYiy0PgbGv5nF5KR

It’s All Greek To Everyone: Appropriations of Rome in the Second Sophistic

by Sulochana Asirvatham, Professor of Classics (Montclair State University)

This event will take place online and we ask that you please register here.

A major theme in the study of imperial Greek literature (or the so-called Second Sophistic) is mimesis, or imitation, of classical texts, which was at least partly conditioned by education in Greek classical rhetoric and literature. I am interested in the possibility of another kind of mimesis in Greek literature: the Hellenizing appropriation of perceived Roman strengths. This idea runs in the opposite direction of conversations in classics that focus on "appropriation" as something that Rome perpetrates on non-Roman subjects, and is the basis for studies I have done over the years on Alexander the Great in Trajanic/Hadrianic Greek literature, whom I tend to see as a Hellenized version of a Roman military and imperialist ideal. Here I consider a few other ways in which Greek writers may be seen to appropriate Romanitas: the use of andreia in Greek literature as a challenge to Roman virtus, for example, and the presentation of Roman political institutions, like the senate, as Greek in their origins.

Adaptation: Translating and Adapting Ancient Texts in the Modern World

A virtual conference co-sponsored by the NYCC and the Classics Program of Hunter College

Register here:

The speakers are:

Diane Arnson Svarlien, verse translator and Classicist (Lexington, Kentucky)

Andrea Kouklanakis (Bard High School Early College; Hunter College)

Aaron Poochigian, poet and translator (Hunter College)

Jackie Murray, Associate Professor of Classics and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky, will deliver a lecture entitled "Anchored in time: The date in Apollonius' Argonautica."

Please pre-register here.

Prof. Murray has kindly provided the following abstract:

"The Argonautica by the Alexandrian librarian Apollonius Rhodius is the only epic in Greek or Latin to survive intact that bridges the gulf of time and culture between Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil’s Latin Aeneid. It retells the myth of the Argo’s voyage around the world, ostensibly reflecting the imperial ambitions of the Ptolemaic Dynasty during the period of its greatest territorial expansion and highest achievements in art, literature, and science.

Nevertheless, the Argonautica has yet to be adequately interpreted against this historical backdrop. For over a century all attempts to contextualize the epic within the appropriate historical, political, cultural, intellectual, or even poetological milieux have been hampered by a seemingly unsolvable controversy over the context of its publication. Although most of the ancient biographical tradition places Apollonius' career during the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221 BCE), the prevailing scholarly opinion, which has dismissed this tradition as unreliably late and self-contradictory, is that the Argonautica was written a generation earlier, during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 BCE).

In this lecture, Dr. Murray uses astronomy to show that the skyscape of the Argonautica mirrors the real sky over Alexandria in 238 BCE: the year, according to the Canopus Decree, that Ptolemy III and Queen Berenice II introduced a new astronomical calendar to celebrate their reign. The correspondence between the poem and the introduction of the calendar both confirms the majority of biographical sources and suggests that the two were inextricably linked to the royal ideology of this particular Ptolemaic royal couple."

*This lecture is Co-sponsored by the Classics Program of The Graduate Center, CUNY

The Annual Spring High School Theater Contest (a 20 minute adaptation of a classical drama) will be based this year on Euripides’ Bacchae.

For info and registration please contact Prof. Matthew McGowan of Fordham University at mamcgowan@fordham.edu.

The New York Classical Club invites you to send your student to this year's Latin Sight Translation Contest. Monetary awards are available to the top three translators in each of the 5 different divisions of the competition.

Your high school teacher must refer you for this contest and must send an accurate number of students along with their names to Ms. Talia Varonos-Pavlopoulos at tvaronos@nightingale.org by April 8, 2020.

The division levels for the competition are as follows:

Caesar (Division I)          Cicero (Division II)          Ovid (Division III)  

Vergil (Division IV)          Horace (Division V)