Classics Alumni Webinar Series

Thank you for continuing to support our Alumni Webinars.

A selection of recordings from our past webinars can be found below. 

Past webinars

Translating Affection in the Iliad

with Matthew Ward

This webinar explores the problem of translation and the ways in which a translation can help us to rethink the texts of antiquity. It uses the specific example of Emily Wilson’s new (2023) Iliad translation – itself a cultural landmark – to approach the question of affection and love in the Iliad. In Wilson’s translation the well-known problem of understanding what Homeric characters want collides with the difficulty of narrating and reading desire. What, precisely, is the relationship between Achilles and Briseis and how should we translate it? Wilson’s version gives one powerful answer to that question, an answer that is also a dialogue with a range of recent ‘rewritings’ of the Iliad (Emily Hauser, Madeline Miller, Pat Barker) that have experimented with desiring female subjects. This webinar therefore explores how a particular translation of the Iliad can be telling for how we read the poem – translations are always interventions in wider cultural movements and in the history of reading epic.

Children of Hephaestus: the image of the worker in classical Greece

with Serafina Cuomo

How was manual labour conceptualised and represented in the classical Greek world? We may be familiar with the views that authors like Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon had of workers, and in particular of their bodies, which are described as deformed and degraded. Is that how workers really were, and how they saw themselves? This talk will explore various ancient perspectives on the representation and self-representation of the body of the worker, using not just human examples, but also the case of the divine craftsman Hephaestus.

Emperors and Interpreters: The Making of the Later Roman Empire

with Lea Niccolai

The final two hundred years of Rome’s imperial history are marked by cultural revolutions, from a new understanding of state authority and of the power and voice of the emperor to the institutionalisation of a new religion, Christianity, impressing a new course onto politics and society. In this talk, we will explore to what extent Rome’s most critical transformations were prepared by interpretive practices. We will discuss the traditions of competitive exegesis developed by rivalling intellectuals seeking to establish their role as authoritative guides for leaders and politicians, and how the debate surrounding the correct reading of divinely inspired texts and of the providential universe influenced politics in times of momentous change.

Reading Pagan Epic in Christian Byzantium: Swords and Scandals

with Tim Whitmarsh

More epic poetry survives from the 5th century AD than any other era of antiquity. Why? Why were Greeks in Christian Byzantium so keen to write in this definitively pagan form? This question will opens up the paradoxes underlying the relationship between Constantinople, ‘the new Rome’, and its past.

Tragedy in the Modern Theatre

with Simon Goldhill

We explore what it means to use ancient tragedy in the modern theatre. From Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, to whether we can assume any background knowledge of classics in a modern audience or if we have to consider the endings of famous ancient stories such as those of Oedipus and Orestes spoilers despite being around for thousands of years.

Searching for Sappho

with Nigel Spivey

The image of a poet. The image of a female writer. The image of desire. The image of female desire; the image of same-sex desire. Paintings, sculptures, mosaics, gemstones and coins – across various media, visualizations of ‘Sappho’ have answered radically different demands over the course of some 2,500 years. This webinar is an exploration of how the fragmentary yet powerful relics of Sappho’s work have generated claims to know her, to be with her, and to be like her. Sappho the poet has been consistently respected and studied. The visions arising from her poetry are more wistful and erratic. Sappho recognised, Sappho adored, Sappho emulated … yet do we have any secure idea of what she looked like? When she first appears, on painted Greek vases, towards the end of the sixth century BCE, is this a portrait – or already some fantastic concoction, with several prime ingredients: ‘celebrity’, sex symbol, lyrical genius?

Bias in Ancient Historiography 

with Franco Basso

Franco takes us on a wide-ranging tour of ancient historiography to show the diverse ideas about bias in ancient sources. From Pseudo- Aristotle to Lucian, Tacitus and Thucydides to Polybius, this is a thorough investigation of what it means to have bias in ancient history writing. 

Alcibiades in Plato's Symposium

with Christian Keime 

Why is Alcibiades late? Paiderastia in Plato's Symposium

Plato's Symposium is perhaps the central text not just for Plato's views of love (erōs), but for the whole Western tradition of thought about love and desire. This talk will consider what we can learn about the role of erōs in education (paideia) from three speeches in the Symposium: Pausanias and Socrates' eulogies of Erōs and Alcibiades' eulogy of Socrates. We will wonder in particular why Plato has Alcibiades come late (and drunk) to Agathon's drinking party and then talk (in very frank detail) about his experience of Socratic education, without being aware of the theory underpinning this practice, which Socrates has just presented through the mouth of a mysterious priestess called Diotima. What do Alcibiades' misunderstandings tell us about the challenges that Plato’s philosophical model of education is likely to meet in any traditional educational system?

Transmission of Latin Texts 

with Stephen Oakley

How did latin texts survive from antiquity until the beginning of printing? In this webinar, Professor Stephen Oakley will outline some of the more important phases in the transmission of Latin texts and give some examples of where progress has been made in the study of the subject and of the techniques used in the investigation of Latin manuscripts.

Earworms

with Rebecca Laemmle

Most people today experience earworms – a particularly obtrusive fragment of music that seems to be stuck in your head (and sometimes makes you hum, sing or tap along). Did people in antiquity experience them too? A burgeoning field of research in the cognitive sciences and musicology suggests that earworms, or Involuntary Musical Imagery, are shaped and determined by the ways a society produces, stores and exposes itself to music. While it has been suggested that earworms have only held sway in the age of modern recording technology ancient literature tells a different story: indeed, there are texts that tell of earworm epidemics. What, then, are the circumstances that gave rise to spontaneous musical recall in Graeco-Roman antiquity, and what are the discourses that paid attention to the phenomenon? Dr. Rebecca Laemmle sets out to address these issues and to ask what modern earworm-sufferers can learn from the ancients

Wine and Time in Horace 

with Robert Rohland

No Roman poet mentions vintage wines as frequently as Horace. In this webinar, Dr Robert Rohland will enquire why Horace talks so much about wines from particular years: what is the relation between old wines and present banquets? Do vintage wines evoke the memory of historical events? And what is the importance of Roman wine labels for Horace?

New work from the Interamna Lirenas Project 

With Alessandro Launaro, Dominique Goddard, and Alfred Deahl

An exciting webinar featuring new work from Cambridge's Interamna Lirenas project. Our panellists, Alessandro Launaro, Dominique Goddard, and Alfred Deahl, were on site this summer and they will present their latest findings and engage in a lively discussion about their research. The Interamna Lirenas project focuses on the ancient city of Interamna Lirenas in Italy, and our panellists will provide unique insights into the archaeology and history of this fascinating site.

Pliny and his letters 

With Chris Whitton

An in-depth look at the life and works of Pliny the Younger, a Roman author and statesman who is best known for his collection of letters. Chris Whitton, an expert on Pliny and the Roman world, will lead the discussion and provide insight into the historical context of Pliny's letters and their significance as intertextual literary works.

Early Greek Philosophy as Poetry

With Henry Spelman and James Warren

Like many other early Greek thinkers, Xenophanes of Colophon was a poet and a philosopher. How should we approach the surviving fragments of his works as both poetry and philosophy? Henry Spelman and James Warren will introduce this fascinating writer and discuss different approaches to his poems

Nero Life and Legend

With Shushma Malik and Ingo Gildenhard

In this webinar, Shushma and Ingo discuss Nero’s life after death. We all know of Nero as a matricide, fratricide, and lover of decadence, but in the early Christian centuries, Nero also became associated with the figure of the Antichrist – in particular, with the beast in Revelation. We will examine why such an association came about, and how it has influenced Nero’s reputation in history and culture over the centuries since.

50 Years of IG and 20 of the 4 Year Course

With Franco Basso, Rosanna Omitowoju, and Charlie Weiss

The last few decades have witnessed a change in how we deliver Classics at Cambridge. We still remain committed to the principle that all classicists at Cambridge should learn Greek and Latin, and the teaching of IG and the 4 year course are fundamental to that. Too many young people don’t have the opportunity to learn the ancient languages at school, or they discover their passion too late. By having these provisions not only have we widened access to the subject but we are also able to benefit from the greater diversity – of background, but also of outlook, learning style, educational expectations, political and personal interests – that these students bring and we are able to create some fantastic Classicists in the process!

New light on ancient health and medicine

With Dr Rebecca Flemming and Dr Piers Mitchell, introduced by James Warren, Chair of the Faculty Board.

The last few decades have witnessed a range of exciting developments in the field of ancient health and medicine—from the discovery of new texts by Galen and hundreds of Roman surgical instruments in Rimini, to new scientific techniques for the study of ancient pathogen DNA and the analysis of ancient drug compounds.

Rebecca and Piers discuss these finds and approaches. How do they change our understanding of health, disease and the medical arts in the classical world?

So what is Classical Art? 

With Professors Caroline Vout and Robin Osborne, introduced by James Warren, Chair of the Faculty Board.

‘Classical art’ carries with it expectations both of beauty and frigidity. It has been the enemy of the avant-garde since the start of the twentieth century. But what was it, and what is it?

Carrie and Robin explore what Classical art has been both in antiquity and in its ever-changing history since antiquity, and what Classical art is and can be today.

Deciphering writing systems of the Aegean Bronze Age

With James Clackson, Professor of Comparative Philology; Torsten Meissner, Associate Professor of Classics; Dr Ester Salgarella, Research Fellow at St John’s College and Dr Pippa Steele, Principal Investigator of the European Research Council funded project Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS).

Sixty years after Michael Ventris and John Chadwick first worked on newly deciphered texts of Linear B, Cambridge is still at the centre of new research into the scripts used in and around the Aegean Sea in the second millennium BC. In this webinar from the autumn 2021 series, Torsten, Pippa and Ester discuss their pioneering research and new discoveries about Linear B and its relationship to Linear A and other ancient scripts. 

Socrates and the virtues of dialogue

In this webinar from the autumn 2021 series, James Warren and Frisbee Sheffield think about the Athenian philosopher Socrates, especially as he is portrayed by Plato. Can lessons be learned from ancient accounts of Socrates’ interactions with his contemporaries for the ways in which we might now conduct discussions about important and difficult matters.  James and Frisbee are introduced by Robin Osborne, Chair of the Faculty Board.

Exploring Aldborough’s Roman remains

In this webinar from the spring 2021 series, Martin Millett, Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology, discusses the Aldborough Roman Town Project with Robin Osborne, Chair of the Faculty Board and Professor of Ancient History.

Isurium Brigantum, today the village of Aldborough in North Yorkshire, was a key town in the Roman administration of the north of Britain with a rich and complex story to tell. The Aldborough Roman Town Project was established a decade ago to carry out archaeological research with an aim to better understand the origins of Isurium Brigantum, its development and its role in the social, political and economic scene of Roman Britain.