A Puzzle for the Holidays
April 11, 2015
Helen Lovatt finds a brainteaser for Latinists at Audley End. Sometimes it can be hard to escape from Classics. My family, for instance, like to visit country houses. What could be more relaxing than a tour of a grand residence, a walk in the park, and a cup of tea in the cafe? But then there …
The Night Raid
April 1, 2015
Helen Lovatt considers Caroline Lawrence’s The Night Raid and writing about the classical world for children. Several people in my Independent Second Year Project group have decided to write for an audience of children. We have been discussing how this can make a difference to your writing in both style and content. For …
Charting the Spartan Mirage
March 17, 2015
Dr Philip Davies discusses the intellectual background to a conference on Plutarch and Sparta, to be held in Nottingham on 31 March. At the core of any research on Sparta lies a peculiar methodological dilemma. Sparta is one of the most renowned of the ancient Greek city-states, and after its defeat of Athens in …
Sappho’s Beloved
March 5, 2015
Doctoral student Harriet Lander introduces a case-study from her work on the history of translations of Sappho. Solon, according to Aelian, asked his nephew to teach him one of Sappho’s poems, ‘So that I may learn it and then die’. This desire to know and understand Sappho’s lyrics has been a pervasive attitude from antiquity …
Singing the blues
March 1, 2015
Mark Bradley hunts for the ‘missing’ colours in the ancient world The ancient Greeks and Romans probably would have wondered what the fuss is about. They would have seen a dress that looked slightly different depending on the viewer’s angle. They might have thought it peculiar as fashion – more like a costume for comedy …
This INSANE post will change your life!
February 28, 2015
Oliver Thomas goes fishing for your attention with the help of some ancient Greek authors. I find ‘clickbait’ one of the most annoying features of the internet. When I’m minding my own procrastinatory business on Facebook, suddenly something entitled ‘This INSANE article will change your life’ pops up in my feed, aggressively colonising my attention by …
A visit to Ally Pally
February 26, 2015
Lynn Fotheringham gets to stand where Patrick Stewart played Oedipus! Elena Theodorokopoulos, a classics lecturer at the University of Birmingham, has organised two screenings of televised productions of Greek tragedy at the Library of Birmingham this fortnight – two Oedipodes (1972 with Ian Holm; 1977 with Patrick Stewart – second half only) tonight, and a 1979 Agamemnon …
Anything but an essay
February 23, 2015
Dr Lynn Fotheringham casts an eye over the inventive work currently going on in her Independent Second-Year Project module. The Independent Second-Year Project, or ISYP, is the Department’s flagship non-traditional assessment module, and a cornerstone of our employability programme. Students choose not only which area of the Classical world they want to explore and how …
Laughing at Poor People
February 18, 2015
Dr Helen Lovatt reflects on teaching Martial 12.32, a poem about the eviction of Vacerra. There is a lot of vitriol aimed at the poor these days: skivers, scum, slackers. It’s all their fault, apparently, that they don’t have enough to eat, or that they have to live on the streets and beg. They have …
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Censorship, gender and power: Fordyce and Catullus 58
March 12, 2015
Helen Lovatt considers the relationship between bowdlerising a classical text and broader questions of censorship. Issues of free speech are still very much debated: recently the classicist Mary Beard was caught up in a twitter storm about no-platforming speakers at universities, in particular certain radical feminists whose views offend some in the transgender community. It …
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