Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values XIII

Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values XIII

The Penn-Leiden Colloquia on Ancient Values were established 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 various perspectives and disciplines. Since the first colloquium in Leiden (in 2000), a wide range of topics has been explored, including manliness, free speech, the spatial organization of value, badness, ‘others’, aesthetic value, the past, landscapes, competition, nighttime, and labor. All earlier colloquia have resulted in edited volumes published by Brill publishers (see list below).

Program for Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values XIII, The Value(s) of Language in the Ancient World

Leiden University, 12-14 June 2025

 

THURSDAY 12 JUNE

Telders Auditorium, Academy Building (Rapenburg 73, Leiden)

 

09.30-10.00     Coffee and registration

10.00-10.15     Welcome and introduction     

 

Panel 1: Languages of Animals, Greeks and Non-Greeks

 

10.15-10.45     Jeremy McInernery (Penn):

                        ‘… They were turned to pigs…; their minds remained the same…’

Speech, nonsense and the human animal

10.45-11.15     Irene de Jong (Amsterdam): 

Breaching the convention of shared language in Greek narrative

 

11.15-11.45     Coffee and tea

 

Panel 2: Languages of Non-Greeks in Greek Drama

 

11.45-12.15     Evert van Emde Boas (Aarhus):

                        The use of Greek/Attic by ‘atypical populations’ in Greek drama

12.15-12.45     Amelia Bensch-Schaus (Penn):

                        The voices of the enslaved in Euripides‘ Medea

 

12.45-14.30     Lunch

 

Panel 3: Etymology in Literature, Greek and Latin

 

14.30-15.00     Sheila Murnaghan (Penn):

                        Tragic knowledge and the truth value of names

15.00-15.30     Johanna Kaiser (Penn):

                        Etymology and the values of language in Martial’s Xenia and Apophoreta

 

15.30-16.00     Coffee

 

Panel 4: Ancient Scholars on the Values of Greek and Latin

 

16.00-16.30     Caroline Petit  (Warwick):      

Galen, language, and Hellenocentric rhetoric: 

Uncovering the hybridity of medicine

16.30-17.00     Stephanos Matthaios (Athens):

Disqualifying grammar, qualifying language. Sextus Empiricus on what grammar fails to recognize about the nature and value of language

 

17.00-17.30     Christoph Pieper (Leiden):                  

The Scholia Gronoviana on Cicero’s speeches:

Valuing Latin at the end of antiquity

 

FRIDAY 13 JUNE

Telders Auditorium, Academy Building (Rapenburg 73, Leiden)

 

Panel 5: Graeco-Roman Views on Minority Languages

 

09.00-09.30    Marta Capano (Siena Stranieri, Groningen) and Viviane Léger Pirus (Paris, Bruxelles): Lost languages: status, prestige and perception of Messapic in the ancient world

09.30-10.00     Harriet Fertik (Ohio State University):                        

A matre doctus… rogare Iudaeus: Martial and Juvenal on the language of Jews in Rome 

10.00-10.30     Adam Gitner (TLL, München):

                        The Roman revaluation of Hebrew

 

10.30-11.00 Coffee

 

Panel 6: Roman Views on Bilingualism

 

11.00-11.30     Hugo Simons (Liège):

Litteras Graecas Athenis, non Lilybaei, Latinas Romae, non in Sicilia (Cic., div. in Caec. 39): The attitude of Latin-speaking authors towards Sicilian Greek-Latin bilingualism

11.30-12.00     Katherine MacDonald (Durham):

Spies, treachery and deceit: 

attitudes to bilingualism in Livy’s Samnite Wars and Punic Wars

 

12.00-14.00     Lunch

 

Panel 7: Homer and / as Language

 

14.00-14.30     Lucien van Beek (Leiden):

                        Feathered words, or: How to say things with arrows 

14.30-15.00     Egbert Bakker (Yale):

                        Homer the language

 

15.00-15.30     Coffee and tea

 

Keynote and Celebration

 

15.30-16.30     Ralph Rosen (Penn):

                        Galen on the Anatomy and Teleology of Language

16.30-17.15     Celebration in honour of Ineke Sluiter and 25 years Penn Leiden

17.15-19.00     Reception

 

SATURDAY 14 JUNE

Lorentzzaal (KOG A1.44), Kamerlingh Onnes Gebouw (Steenschuur 25, Leiden)

 

Panel 8: Languages in the Second Sophistic

            

10.15-10.45     Bé Breij (Nijmegen):

Rerum tumor, sententiarum vanissimus strepitus: 

the language of Sophistopolis

10.45-11.15     Teddy Fassberg (Tel Aviv):

                        The value of Latin in the Greek Second Sophistic

 

11.15-11.45     Coffee and tea

 

Panel 9: Greek versus Latin

 

11.45-12.15     Susan Bilynskyj Dunning (Oxford):

The significance of Greek and Latin funerary divine associations

12.15-12.45     Paul Johnston (Stanford):

Devaluing Greek: the correspondence of Paul and Seneca and the monolingualisation of Latin literature

 

12.45-14.15     Lunch

 

Panel 10: Valuing Varieties of Greek

 

14.15-14.45     Joanne Stolk (Leiden):

                        The need for revision. 

Scribal awareness of language variation in Greek papyri from Egypt

14.45-15.15     Niels Schoubben (Leiden):

                        John Philoponus on dialects in his treatise on accents

 

15.15-15.45     Coffee and tea

 

Panel 11: Valuing Ancient Languages in and after Antiquity

 

15.45-16.15     Mariia Timoshchuk and Raf Van Rooy (Leuven):

Graece aliquid addere litteris suave est:

Latin-Greek code-switching through Roman and Renaissance eyes

 

16.15-16.45     Han Lamers (Oslo) and Bettina Reitz-Joosse (Groningen): 

Language myths:

the politicization of ancient languages in comparative perspective

 

16.45-17.00     Closing remarks

CALL FOR PAPERS

The topic of the thirteenth colloquium, to be held at Leiden University, June 12-14, 2025, will 
be: The Values of Language(s) in the Ancient World.


The poet Ennius used to say that he had three hearts, because he knew how to speak Greek, 
Oscan, and Latin (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 17.17.1)). Language is who we are and who we 
want to be: this is true in ancient times as well as in the contemporary world. While language 
as such is crucial for human communities to survive, language diversity can be a cause of 
dispute: the story of the Tower of Bable has never lost its significance. In the ancient Greek 
world, reflections on the nature and power of language can be found from the poems of Homer 
and Hesiod onwards. Logos was one of the most prominent objects of research for the 
presocratic philosophers, sophists, Plato, Aristotle, and Stoics; Greek and Roman grammarians, 
rhetoricians, and critics thought about language as a system of signs, as a method of 
communication, and as a tool for persuasion.


This conference will examine the ways in which Greeks and Romans valued language in 
general, their own languages, and other languages. What values are connected with Greek and 
Latin terms like λόγος, γλῶσσα, διάλεκτος, lingua, sermo, and oratio? How does language 
acquire sociocultural value within specific Greek or Roman contexts? What are the values or 
powers ascribed to language in general, to language diversity, and to specific languages? 
Ancient and modern voices have tended to associate the Greek language with such values as 
precision, euphony, and paideia; the Latin language in its turn has been thought to express order, 
rationality, and monumentality. Such evaluations are now considered analytically flawed; but
the subjective connotations of languages do reveal how human beings understood and presented 
themselves and others.


Lucretius famously complains about the poverty of the Latin language (patrii sermonis 
egestas). How did Romans think about the language of the Greeks, and how did Greeks 
evaluate Latin? What are some of the Greek and Roman prejudices about ‘barbarian’ 
languages? What policies were adopted to discourage the use of languages other than Greek or 
Latin, such as Syrian, Hebrew or Etruscan? How did language values structure understandings 
of racial and ethnic difference, of class difference, and of gender? In what circumstances was it 
acceptable for Romans to speak Greek? Why was Latin sometimes considered to be a corrupt 
form of Greek? What narratives were told about migrants who struggled to speak the language 
of their hosts, or about people who were fluent in two or more languages, like Ennius? How did 
anthropocentrism shape the understanding of language in the ancient world? Through these and 
further questions the conference will examine how language and languages were valued in the 
ancient Greek and Roman worlds.


Papers may address ancient perspectives on the languages of gods, human beings, animals, and 
even nature. They may discuss the values of written, spoken and body languages, ancient 
reflections on the nature, origins, and histories of languages, and ancient views on bilingualism, 
multilingualism, language diversity, and hierarchies of languages or dialects. We are interested 
in literary, philosophical, and rhetorical approaches to language, but also in ancient language 
politics, including regulations for the use of language in contexts of law, education, religion, 
migration, and administration.


‘The Values of Language(s)’ is a highly relevant topic in our contemporary society, in which 
questions of languages are contested issues. Examples include the call for linguistic integration 
and participation of minority groups and the (political and academic) debates about the use of
English at Dutch universities.


This conference will not only celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Penn-Leiden Colloquia on 
Ancient Values, but also pay tribute to prof. Ineke Sluiter, co-founder (with Ralph Rosen) of 
the Penn-Leiden Colloquia. Ineke Sluiter is co-organizer of many of the colloquia, co-editor of 
many volumes, and one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient views on language.


We invite abstracts for papers (25 minutes + 10 minutes discussion) that address the values 
ascribed to language(s) in the ancient world. We hope to bring together junior and senior 
researchers in all areas of ancient world 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.


Selected papers will be considered for publication by De Gruyter Brill. Those interested in 
presenting a paper are requested to submit an abstract of 300 words (maximum) in English, as 
email attachment, by 1 October 2024. Unfortunately, the organizers will probably not be able 
to recompense travel expenses. They hope, but cannot promise to be able to offer some 
assistance for accommodation.


Contact (please copy each with email correspondence):

Rita Copeland                     Casper de Jonge
rcopelan@sas.upenn.edu     c.c.de.jonge@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Earlier Penn-Leiden Colloquia:

2000: ‘Andreia’— Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity. (published in 2003, edd. Ralph Rosen and Ineke Sluiter).

2002: Free Speech in Classical Antiquity (2005, edd. Ineke Sluiter and Ralph Rosen).

2004: City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical Antiquity (2006, edd. Ralph Rosen and Ineke Sluiter).

2006: KAKOS: Badness and Anti-Values in Classical Antiquity (2008, edd. Ineke Sluiter and Ralph Rosen).

2008: Valuing Others in Classical Antiquity (2010, edd. Ralph Rosen and Ineke Sluiter).

2010: Aesthetic Value in Classical Antiquity (2012, edd. Ineke Sluiter and Ralph Rosen).

2012: Valuing the Past in the Greco-Roman World (2014, edd. James Ker and Christoph Pieper).

2014: Valuing Landscapes in Classical Antiquity (2016, edd. Jeremy McInerney and Ineke Sluiter).

2016: Eris vs. Aemulatio: Competition in Classical Antiquity (2018, edd. Cynthia Damon and Christoph Pieper).

2018: The Values of Nighttime in Classical Antiquity: Between Dawn and Dusk (2020, edd. James Ker and Antje Wessels).

2021: Valuing Labor in Antiquity (in preparation, edd. Miko Flohr and Kim Bowes)

2023: Meanings and Values of the Sacred in Greco-Roman Antiquity (in preparation, edd. 
Kim Beerden, Jeremy McInerney, Irene Polinskaya)