Just a heads up: the lectures are going to be delivered virtually this year.
February 6
“Art and Allusion: Image Construction in Attic Vase-Painting”
François Lissarrague, Directeur d’Études Emeritus, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
February 27
“Imperial Transgressions: Satire and Subversion in the Life of Elagabalus”
Mary Beard, Professor of Classics, University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College
March 13
“Defying Grammar: Linguistic Privileges for the Gods”
Maurizio Bettini, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology and Director of the Center for Anthropology and the Classics, University of Siena
April 3
“The Shield and the Cave: Motion and Emotion in Plato’s Republic”
Mary Margaret McCabe, Professor of Ancient Philosophy Emerita, King’s College London
I missed the first lecture but watched the second last night. It was a very interesting account of the treatment of Elagabalus in the sources and what it can tells us about autocracy and the way it is problematised.
I haven’t found the link for the first lecture but apparently all four of the lectures are to find their way onto the Berkley classics YouTube channel. The Beard lecture is an unlisted video so perhaps that’s the case with the first.
Thanks for the link, Ahab. It was a fascinating lecture. I have always wondered about those shields and cups floating around detached from the “main” scene on pots and now I have a some new ways of thinking about them. It was an illuminating insight into the methods of the painters and underlined how radical some of their ideas must have been, particularly the way they played with the frame and how it cut across figures leaving you to imagine what was outside.
I also watched last night’s lecture “Defying Grammar: Linguistic Privileges for the Gods” by Maurizio Bettini. He talked about how texts often use the plural form of God’s names despite ancient grammarian’s saying that there is no plural form and that the gods are singular.
He was dismissive of the usual explanation (by Fordyce et al) of Catullus’ “Lugete, O Veneres Cupidiniseque” as simply “characteristic extravagance” and developed an argument based on the Gods’ lack of personhood so that the idea of grammatical number didn’t really apply to them.
I watched on Zoom and the lecture unfortunately has not yet turned up on the Berkeley Classics YouTube channel. The link I gave to the Mary Beard lecture is no longer working so I can only find the first lecture which Ahab posted. That lecture has been subtitled and perhaps that accounts for the delay in posting them. Ellen Oliensis (who hosted) reiterated the intention to have all the lectures on line, as well as some older material. If anyone has links please post them.