by Costas Panayotakis For some years now I have been conducting research on farcical and rather uncouth Latin comedies conventionally called “Atellane plays” (in Latin, fabulae Atellanae), the scripted incarnation of which is now known to us only through the “fragments” (or, more precisely, literary citations) of plays composed by the playwrights Novius, Pomponius, Mummius,… Continue reading
by Adrastos Omissi My surname has always been something of a mystery to me. From as young as I can remember, I was very aware that it was odd – I learnt at an early age that it always had to be spelled out, and I have known the NATO phonetic letter for ‘s’ (Sierra)… Continue reading
by Kirsten Blackham (Classics PhD, University of Glasgow) While the search for Cleopatra’s tomb has been a central point of interest for archaeological research in the Ptolemaic period, there seems to be a curious lack of interest in the recovery of her Mammisi (or birth-temple) at Armant (ancient Hermonthis). Cleopatra VII’s Armant Mammisi is a… Continue reading
The politics of the UK and US over the past two years has led to an upsurge in populist politics. How far this is distinctively new is open to question—leaving aside precursors in British and American politics, similar trends have been well in evidence in continental Europe and there is a long and ugly history… Continue reading
As part of the project on Hero of Alexandria and his Theatrical Automata, I’ve been looking at the history of automata in Greek and Roman antiquity. As well as Hero’s treatise, there are occasional brief references to devices that may (or perhaps may not be) automata. The evidence is tantalising and gives hints about how… Continue reading
As part of my research project on Gaza in late antiquity, I am organising, together with my colleagues Maijastina Kahlos and Katja Ritari, a one-day workshop on the construction and representation of identities from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Venue: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Fabianinkatu 24, room 136 Time: Wednesday, 2 March 2016, 9am… Continue reading
Galen of Pergamum (AD 129–c. 216), a central figure in the history of medicine and the intellectual culture of the Imperial period, has been the focus of much scholarly activity in the last few decades. This lively interest in him can be ascribed to his contributions to various specialised fields in the art of medicine… Continue reading
One of the research projects currently underway in Classics at Glasgow is looking at the fragments of Roman oratory from the Republican period. This project (‘The Fragments of the Republican Roman Orators, www.frro.gla.ac.uk), funded by the European Research Council, aims to gather and make sense of all the evidence for public speech in the Republican… Continue reading
Who says that working on Latin manuscripts and moral sayings is a dull pursuit? For about six years now I have been travelling to Italy, Germany, and France to gather information from several manuscripts so as to edit afresh an important collection of Latin one-line “sayings” or “proverbs” (sententiae or proverbia), which, despite its massive impact… Continue reading
We classicists tend to study ancient oratory in isolation and, at most, branch out to other ancient oratorical cultures, comparing Roman with Greek and vice versa. But after some years of being asked about my opinion on Tony Blair’s and Barack Obama’s oratory and finding that as a Ciceronian scholar I had surprisingly little to… Continue reading
