Kirk Ambrose

In fall 2023, Professor Kirk Ambrose was selected as a 2023-4 Distinguished Research Lecturer. This prestigious award, one of the highest honors bestowed on the CU Ā鶹ӰŌŗ faculty, recognizes colleagues with a distinguished body of academic and/or creative achievement and prominence, as well as contributions to CU's educational and service missions. 

Kirk delivered his Distinguished Research Lecture, "The Authentic and the Counterfeit in Medieval Art," on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 4:00-5:00, to a packed house in Chancellorā€™s Hall and Auditorium (CASE building).

To view the recording of Kirkā€™s stimulating lecture, click .

The abstract of his talk is below:

Authenticating relics was a foundational activity during the Middle Ages in Europe, for it was widely understood that these earthly remains of saints offered a vehicle for the divine to work miracles, from healing the sick to punishingā€”and even killingā€”enemies of the Church. Because possessing a venerable saintā€™s bodily remains could bolster the prestige and financial fortunes of institutions, the temptation to invent fake claims could be great. Indeed, the years between 1000 and 1150 have been dubbed the ā€œgolden age of medieval forgery.ā€ To explore how institutions bolstered their claims to possess authentic relics in this period rife with fakes, Professor Ambrose's lecture will focus on the case of the monastery of Sainte-Foy, Conques, in France. He will examine how this community used the visual arts to advance their claims, as well as to condemn those who engaged in counterfeiting practices.

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Defining Beer in the Ancient World
By Travis Rupp

Wednesday, November 29, 7:00pm
Eaton Humanities & Zoom
Free and open to the public
Download the poster

ABSTRACT

This lecture will be a deep dive into the academic debate over what constitutes beer throughout history and how it was initially ā€œinventedā€ in the ancient world. Travis will discuss his most recent involvement in United States federal law where the definition of beer is being hotly debated and contested by macro breweries. As an expert witness in a recently decided federal case, Travis was called upon to discuss the origins and definitions of beer throughout antiquity and why the definition of beer is what it is today. Having been relieved of his legal duties (for now), he can share that message publicly. This presentation will demonstrate how beer is a timeless artifact that ties the present to the distant past.

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Pentheusā€™ Myth Beyond Euripides

Tuesday, November 14, 5:30 p.m.
Eaton Humanities Building, #190

Speaker: Dr. Bartłomiej Bednarek
Humboldt Fellow, Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich
Assistant Professor, University of Warsaw

·”³Ü°ł¾±±č¾±»å±š²õā€™ Bacchae is the only well-preserved, relatively early text that presents, at substantial length, a disturbing but fascinating image of Dionysus, which suggested to several modern-era intellectuals (e.g., Nietzsche, Benedict, Dodds, Otto, Girard, Kott) that inquiry into the true nature of this divinity may shed light on some particularly important aspects of ancient civilization. Due to the state of preservation of the dossier of texts relevant to the study of Dionysus, quite inevitably we tend to extrapolate ·”³Ü°ł¾±±č¾±»å±š²õā€™ vision onto the whole of Greco-Roman culture, very often at the cost of downplaying the role of some other, oftentimes less-intriguing texts. This paper analyzes material to discuss the relative importance of Bacchae in different places and times. Before Euripides, Pentheusā€™ myth was one of the most widely known stories about Dionysus.

This is a free public lecture, sponsored by the Department of Classics. Everyone is welcome.
classics.colorado.edu | 303-492-6257

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Environmental Change in Ancient Anatolia

Professor John M. Marston

Wednesday, November 8th at 7:00pm
Eaton Humanities & Zoom ()
Free and open to the public

ABSTRACT

Identifying how societies make decisions about agricultural practices is important for understanding why some agricultural systems flourish over hundreds or thousands of years while others lead to environmental degradation and societal collapse. Archaeological data offer a unique long-term perspective on the sustainability of agriculture and how societies adapt to complex, intertwined changes in environment and economy on both local and regional scales.

In this lecture, Dr. John M. Marston (Boston University) presents recent work from the ancient urban center of Gordion in central Anatolia (modern Turkey), where complex agricultural strategies were employed to adapt to coincident environmental and social change on both local and regional scales. By situating Gordion within its regional agricultural setting over time, Marston concludes that an understanding of local political economy is necessary to reconstruct agricultural decision making and helps to understand patterns of anthropogenic environmental change.

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Patronage and Clientelism in Archaic & Early Classical Greece: A Hypothesis

Monday, October 16, 5:00 p.m.
Eaton Humanities Building, #125

Speaker: ²Ń²¹°ł±š°ģ&²Ō²ś²õ±č;°Ā±šĆ§“Ē·É²õ°ģ¾±, University of Warsaw
Sponsored by CU Ā鶹ӰŌŗ's , the , and the Department of Classics

Free and open to the public

As John K. Davies observed in 2005, ā€˜the informal networks of influenceā€™ and ā€˜social control,ā€™ in other words, Greek and especially Athenian ā€˜patronageā€™ (broadly conceived), ā€˜has only recently begun to attract the attention it deserves.ā€™ To this date, ā€˜interpersonal relations between unequal partiesā€™ and, in particular, political ā€˜clientelismā€™ in archaic & classical Greece seems a deeply understudied issue. The locus classicus in this respect is the much-discussed passage of Theopompus (FGrHist 115 F 89), the anecdote referred to also in Plutarch's Life of Cimon (10.1-2; cf. AP 27.3), about Cimon's magnanimity towards his (most probably) fellow-demotai and Athenian citizens at large. In this paper, I will argue that several strangely neglected episodes of the Persian Wars and its aftermath, such as Herodotus 8.17, may serve as a good starting point for reassessing our scattered pieces of historical evidence regarding archaic and classical Greek history - on the basis of sources ranging from Hesiod to Athenaeus.

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Call for Papers
The 2024 Ā鶹ӰŌŗ Classics Graduate Colloquium conference:
Plague and Pandemic in the Ancient World
Friday, 19^th ā€“ Saturday 20^th January, 2024
Keynote Address by HunterGardner (University of South Carolina)

Through the very trauma they inflict, plagues and pandemics stir conflict and controversy and exercise an enduring intellectual and emotional appeal. The intersecting religious, material, medical, historical, artistic, and literary responses they engendered in antiquity tell a complex story of confrontation with an experience dwarfing individuals and collectives alike. These ancient responses elicit questions for us as modern readers and experiencers of pandemic, and they offer us the opportunity to interact with earlier moments in the evolution of plague discourse. What were the politics of plague at different moments and in different geographical and cultural arenas in antiquity? What opportunities for transgression did plague create, and (how) did societies move to control them? What power dynamics and hierarchies were strengthened or undermined by the intrusion of plague? What did ancient attempts to combat plague, to respond to its intervention, to document it, or to trace its physical, emotional, social, or material consequences look like? Did plague create new taboos or destroy old ones, and what kinds of fear or cultural imperatives did plague engender? How was plague represented in the ancient imaginary? How do our own notions about plague and plague discourse affect our study of these topics in the ancient world?

The Ā鶹ӰŌŗ Classics Graduate Colloquium invites papers from current graduate students addressing plague and pandemic as played out across the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond. We welcome papers viewing the topic through the lens of anthropology, art history, archaeology, ethnography, literature, philosophy, and religion, among others. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words via email to pandemicconference24@gmail.com by August 30, 2023; subject line ā€œĀ鶹ӰŌŗ Classics Graduate Colloquium 2024 Submission.ā€ Abstracts should include a title for the paper and be anonymous PDF files. Please include your name, institution, and the title of your abstract in the body of your email. Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes.

Possible topics are not limited to but may include:

• the social consequences of plague and pandemic as experienced in antiquity and beyond
• effects of pandemics on ancient belief systems or more broadly the relationship between religion and disease in the ancient world
• ancient material responses to disease and its effects, including votives, inscriptions, prosthetics -
• ancient artistic or literary responses to plague and pandemic and their later reception
• the ways plague since antiquity has prompted reflection on human ingenuity and its hard limits
• ancient dietary, surgical, or pharmacological responses to plague
• figures in the history of medicine and their intellectual or physical encounters with plague

Please direct any questions to pandemicconference24@gmail.com.

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Phocion the Good and Philippe PĆ©tain, Marshal of France: Parallel Lives?

Professor Peter Hunt

Thursday, April 20, 7:00 p.m.
Hale Science Building Room 230 & Zoom ()
Free and open to the public
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ABSTRACT 

This lecture imagines how the Greek biographer Plutarch might write a Parallel Lives of an ancient and a modern stateman: Phocion the Good was a fourth-century Athenian statesman, who capped his long career under the democracy with a leading position in an oligarchy imposed by the Macedonians; Philippe PĆ©tain, the hero of Verdun in the first World War, collaborated with the Nazis after the defeat of France in the Second World War.  Both Phocion and PĆ©tain ended their political lives on trial and then condemned by their own people.  This thought experiment can help us better understand the structure, methods, and ethical goals of Plutarchā€™s Parallel Lives.

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Uncovering the City of the Baboon: New excavations at Hermopolis Magna, Egypt

Professor Yvona Trnka-Amrhein

Thursday, March 16, 7:00 p.m.
Hale Science Building Room 230 & Zoom ()
Free and open to the public
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ABSTRACT 

In January 2023, CUā€™s Classics Department and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities began a new excavation and conservation project at the Greco-Roman city of Hermopolis Magna in Egypt. This talk gives an overview of the history of Hermopolis (Pharaonic Khemenu), previous archaeological work at the site, and a preview of what the new excavations have discovered, focusing on the cityā€™s magnificent 5th century CE Christian Basilica which was built from the pieces of several Ptolemaic buildings and other earlier structures. The work at the Basilica site has revealed important evidence for understanding the forms of early Ptolemaic architecture and the history of worship at Hermopolis. These discoveries are only the beginning of what the city has to offer historians of ancient Egypt.

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Speaker: Jacqueline Fellows

6:00 pm Thursday, March 9
Eaton Humanities, HUMN135
Free and open to the public!

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Imagining a Greek Home for an Egyptian Goddess: Time, Landscape, and Architecture in Greek Sanctuaries to Isis 

Professor Lindsay Mazurek 

Wednesday, January 25 at 7:00pm
Hale Sciences 270 or via Zoom
Free and Open to Public

ABSTRACT

When Isis first arrived on Greek shores in the 3rd century BCE, her new followers had to build sanctuaries appropriate to an Egyptian goddess. In the process of imagining a place for their Greek Isis to dwell, devotees came up with a wide range of eclectic solutions that intertwined local needs, imperialist fantasy, and fantastical chronology. These sanctuaries do not draw from contemporaneous Egyptian art and architecture, but rather from Greek stereotypes about Egypt and the Nile River. Isisā€™ Greek temples, I argue, allowed Greek devotees to imagine Egypt in a way that responded to their own experiences as provincial subjects of the Roman Empire. 

I begin with a brief overview of Isisā€™ and Sarapis cultsā€™ arrival in Greece in the early Hellenistic period. Then, I turn to literary evidence, in which Greco-Roman authors from Herodotus to Pliny the Younger characterize Egypt as a timeless and strange place and highlight its unique flora and fauna. I next trace the popularity of these ideas in wall paintings and mosaics, where depictions of the Nile convey ideas of otherness and imperial control. I conclude by discussing the sanctuaries of the Egyptian gods at Marathon and Gortyna. The sanctuary at Marathon combines imaginative architecture that resembles Pharaonic Egyptian temples, archaizing sculpture that evoked a timeless Greco-Egyptian past, and a riverine setting that recalled the Nile Delta. At Gortyna, the sanctuary includes both an underground water crypt that echoed the Nilometers used to measure the riverā€™s annual flood and cattle statuettes that personified the riverā€™s waters. Taken together, this evidence suggests that Greek devotees used sanctuary spaces to explore Greek conceptions of Egypt as an imagined, far-off, and ancient place that they could control in much the same way that Rome controlled and imagined Greece.  

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