Welcome to the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. For over two centuries Penn has offered a variety of undergraduate and graduate programs representing all aspects of the broad field of Classical Studies, from languages and literature to history, archaeology and cultural studies. The Department encourages interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to teaching and research and maintains productive ties with a variety of programs, including Religious Studies, English, Comparative Literature, Medieval Studies, Philosophy, Linguistics, Italian Studies, History of Art, and the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Jeremy McInerney, Department Chair
Emily Wilson, Graduate Chair, Classical Studies
Cynthia Damon, Graduate Chair, Ancient History
James Ker, Undergraduate Chair
Julie Nishimura-Jensen, Director, Post-Baccalaureate Program

Forg[er]ing and Forg(ett)ing the Past: The Decree of Themistocles redux

Speaker: 
Michael Arnush, Skidmore College

In 1960 Michael Jameson of the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania published the editio princeps of an inscription from Troezen in the Argolid purporting to represent a decree of the Athenian strategos Themistokles. Because the text appears to conflict with the Herodotean account of the Persian Wars, for fifty years scholars have struggled with the authenticity of this document. Is it an inept Hellenistic copy of the original from ca. 481 BCE? is it an amalgam of decrees from the 5th-3rd centuries?

Event Date: 
02/02/2012
Event Time: 
4:30 pm

Early Corinthian alabastron, c. 600 BC, University Museum Collections

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