The Penn-Leiden Colloquia on Ancient Values were established in 2000 as a biennial venue in which scholars could investigate the diverse aspects of Greek and Roman values. Each colloquium focuses on a single theme, which participants explore from a diversity of perspectives and disciplines.

Next Colloquium Program

The topic of the seventh colloquium, to be held at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, June 15-16, 2012, will be:

Valuing Antiquity in Antiquity

The ‘classical tradition’ is no invention of modernity. Already in ancient Greece and Rome, the privileging of the ancient over the present and future played an integral role in social and cultural discourses of every period. In this colloquium we want to examine this temporal organization of value and the mechanisms by which it was produced and sustained—in other words, ancient valuations of antiquity as expressions of lived value-systems. How did specific Greek and Roman communities use notions of antiquity to define themselves or others? What models from the past proved most acceptable or desirable (or not) for political practice or for self-fashioning? What groups were the main agents, or audiences, of such discourses on the value of antiquity, and what were their priorities and their motivations? What were the differences between Roman and Greek approaches, or between antiquarianism, genealogy, classicism, nostalgia, canonization and their opposites? How did temporal systems for ascribing value intersect with the organization of space, the production of narrative, or the espousal and application of aesthetic criteria?

For the seventh Penn-Leiden colloquium, we invite abstracts for papers (30 minutes) that address ‘the past in the past’ along these lines. We hope to bring together researchers in all areas of classical studies, including literature, philosophy, linguistics, history, and visual and material culture, and hope to discover the significant points of intersection and difference between these areas of focus.

Friday 15 June 2012, University Library, “Grote Vergaderzaal”

9.00 h Opening

9.10 Jonas Grethlein ‘Questioning the value of the past in ancient Greece’

9.50  Sheila Murnaghan ‘The assessment of ancient valor in Sophocles’ Ajax’

10.30  Karen Bassi ‘Croesus’ offerings and the value of the past in Herodotus’ Histories’

11.10            Coffee/Tea

11.40  Amanda Reiterman ‘Keimêlia in context. Toward an understanding of the value of antiquities in the past’

12.20  Margaret Miles ‘Burnt temples in the landscape of the past’

13.00            Lunch

14.15  Ralph Rosen ‘Galen on the testimony of classical poets’

14.55 Casper de Jonge ‘The Attic Muse and the Asian harlot. Classicizing allegories in Dionysius and Longinus’

15.35  Lawrence Kim ‘The idea of the “archaic” in imperial literature’ 

16.15            Coffee/Tea

16.45  Mieke de Vos ‘From Lesbos she took her honeycomb. Sappho and the female tradition in Greek and Roman poetry’

17.25  Jeremy McInerney ‘Pelasgians and Leleges. Using the past to understand the present’

18.15            Drinks

Saturday 16 June 2012, LIPSIUS-building, room 147 

9.00  Christina Kraus ‘Long ago and far away… Agricola as old-time hero’

9.40  Caitlin Gillespie ‘Agrippina the Younger. Tacitus’ unicum exemplum’

10.20  Lisa Cordes ‘Si te nostra tulissent saecula. Comparison with the past as a method of glorifying the present in imperial panegyrics’

11.00            Coffee/Tea

11.30  Eleanor Leach ‘M. Attilius Regulus: Making defeat into victory. Diverse values in an ambivalent story’

12.10  Jason Nethercut ‘The anti-value of antiquity in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura’

12.50            Lunch

14.00  Antje Wessels ‘Subversive mimicry as a concept of art in Roman literature’

14.40  Ilaria Ramelli ‘Valuing antiquity in antiquity by means of allegoresis’

15.20  Joseph Howley ‘Aulus Gellius and the evaluation of antiquity’s mediators’

16.00            Coffee/Tea

16.30 Maaike Leemreize ‘The Egyptian past in the Roman present’

17.10 Joseph Farrell ‘The Roman suburbium and the Roman past’

17.50            Final discussion and closing remarks (until ca. 18.30)

Contact (please copy both with email correspondence):

For further information on the 2012 Colloquium, see Leiden.

Previous Penn-Leiden Colloquia

1. Andreia: Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity, Leiden, 2000
2. Freedom of Speech in Classical Antiquity, Philadelphia, 2002
3. City and Countryside in the Ancient Imagination, Leiden, 2004
4. Kakos: Badness and Anti-Values in Classical Antiquity, Philadelphia, 2006
5. Valuing Others in Classical Antiquity, Leiden, 2008
6. Aesthetic Value in Classical Antiquity, Philadelphia, 2010

Publications

Four essay collections drawn from these colloquia have been published so far by Brill Academic Publishers (Leiden). A fifth volume is forthcoming and a sixth is in preparation.