n n NOTA BENE n n v o l . 25 n o. 2 News from the Harvard Department of the Classics academic year 2019-2020 l NOTES FROM THE CHAIR By Kathleen Coleman am writing three days into the resumption of classes tenure-track search in Classical Archaeology that resulted in after the spring break that marked the transition of the appointment of Meg Andrews (PhD Penn 2015), who Isociety from BC (Before COVID-19) to DC (During is an expert on the Subura in Rome and will join us this COVID-19). We look forward to AC (After COVID-19), coming year. We were able to say goodbye to our graduating even though we don’t know when that will be. In the seniors (fourteen of them!) at our customary celebration meantime, our Classics community has shown the for the submission of senior theses on the last day of term resilience and adaptability that is only to be expected before spring break. It was an especially poignant occasion from scholars and students of a far-off society, radically because, as was then suspected and has now been confirmed, different from our own, which experienced upheavals, there will be no Commencement this year. Harvard without hardship, and suffering that most of us, so far, have never Commencement . ! undergone. Knowing that those cataclysmic events But the eternal verities remain, and with them the yielded survivors, and that some transcendent works of art, Department of the Classics. Inside this edition you can read literature, and philosophy were born of those experiences, detailed accounts of what individual students and faculty equips us to step into the unknown, alert and resolute, taking have been up to. We hope that these descriptions will make comfort from our friends and associates whom we have the you nostalgic for Boylston Hall and that you will come back privilege of seeing every day, thanks to modern technology, to visit us when it is safe to do so, in the happy era AC to even if we cannot sit beside them and share common space which we all so keenly look forward. m with them in all the ways that, until now, we have taken for granted. v CONTENTS v Our Department has flourished this year: we welcomed Rachel Love (PhD Yale 2019) to our ranks as an Assistant Notes from the Chair 1 Professor, Natasha Bershadsky (PhD Chicago 2013) as a Faculty News 2 part-time Lecturer, Harry Morgan (DPhil Oxford 2018) Poem of Walter 4 as a Harvard College Fellow in Ancient History, and Lisa Clark as Publications Designer. In September we likewise GENED 1131: Loss 8 welcomed a cohort of seven G-1 graduate students New Graduate Students 10 representing five of our seven PhD programs (Ancient Student Travel 13 History, Byzantine Greek, Classical Philology, Medieval designed by lisa kyle clark Latin, and Modern Greek). In the fall we conducted a 1 FACULTY NEWS FACULTY NEWS Dimiter Angelov’s new book The Byzantine Hellene: The mentary on the De interpretatione of Aristotle. His collab- Finally, Gojko Barjamovic (NELC), Giovanni Bazzana Gregory Nagy continues his weekly pattern of alternat- Life of Theodore Laskaris and Byzantium in the Thirteenth Cen- orator, Katerina Ierodiakonou, will translate the text into (Divinity School), and I have launched a new universi- ing between the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washing- tury (Cambridge University Press) appeared in July 2019. English, and the volume is scheduled to be published in ty initiative in Ancient Studies, to bring together faculty ton (where he is currently the faculty director) and teaching The book takes advantage of an exceptional body of auto- the De Gruyter series Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca et and graduate students from across Harvard who work on at the Harvard campus in Cambridge. A paperback second biographical sources and reconstructs the experiences and Byzantina. m any aspect of the ancient world. Alongside a new website edition of his book, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, opinions of the reforming ruler, original philosopher, and (https://ancientstudies.harvard.edu) and a weekly calendar has just been published by the Belknap imprint of Harvard social commentator Theodore II Laskaris (1221/22-1258). of events (to sign up, go to https://lists.fas.harvard.edu/ University Press. Also, February 14, 2020 marks the fifth an- It opens a new vista onto relations between the medieval David Elmer mailman/listinfo/ancientstudies), we have hosted two An- niversary of his publishing weekly essays in Classical Inquiries East and West, as they were seen by a key contemporary Last year I edited a new, third edition of Albert Lord’s The cient Studies Visitors – Wouter Henkelman (École Pratique (https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu) without having political actor. The Byzantine Hellene represents the first at- Singer of Tales, designed and co-directed a new study abroad des Hautes Études, Paris) speaking on Achaemenid-Greek missed a single week during the past five years. In the spring tempt at a full biography of an individual from the Byzan- program in Croatia, and published my first issue as the new encounters and Annette Yoshiko Reed (NYU) on angels, of 2020, he is receiving his third honorary doctorate from tine Middle Ages: a mixture of a personal biography, a ruler’s editor of the journal Oral Tradition. Lectures delivered at the demons, and Hellenistic cultural politics. m a Greek university (the University of Crete in Rethymno; biography, and intellectual biography. An unsettled young Harvard Certamen in March and in Wrocław, Poland, in the first two awards, both in the year 2009, were from the man from a Byzantine royal family established in Anato- December allowed me to explore the operation of “narra- University of Patras and the Aristotle University of Thessa- lian exile after the fall of Constantinople to the Western tive desire” and collective memory in the Odyssey; a larger Ivy Livingston loniki). m crusaders in 1204, Laskaris struggled for survival against an research project on the Odyssey may be in the offing. In the I have been working on “Hedera,” a web application de- entrenched aristocracy, recorded his thoughts and feelings meantime, I am looking forward to a sabbatical next year, signed to enable language learners to develop reading flu- in letters written in a particular literary style, wrote original during which I hope to complete a commentary on Iliad This year, Charles M. Stang taught “Early Christian ency by applying the results of research on second language philosophy critical of scholasticism in the West, and had a Books 5–8. m Thought 1: the Greek Tradition,” a new freshman seminar acquisition, results which suggest that in order to learn new political vision of Hellenism unique before the modern era. on “Gnosticism and Film,” and “Advanced Syriac.” He re- language items through reading, learners should already In the fall semester of 2019 Professor Angelov taught a cently saw the publication of two articles: “The Doubled know at least 90% of the words in a text. new Gen Ed class, The Crusades and the Making of East and Paul Kosmin Self and the Worship of the Gods,” in Maren R. Niehoff and Using Hedera, a teacher or learner can compare any West, which he will be offering again in the fall semester The highlight of the academic year was, as ever, teaching. Joshua Levinson (eds), Constructions of the Self in the Roman text against a list of known words to receive a readability of 2021. m In addition to my regular undergraduate survey of Greek Empire (Mohr Siebeck, 2020), pp. 149-168; and “In my end percentage. Since word knowledge is gained incremental- history (97a), Susanne Ebbinghaus and I taught a new is my beginning,” in a special symposium on John Behr’s ly, learners rank each word on a 5-point scale. When they undergraduate-graduate seminar on the history and archae- John the Theologian & his Paschal Gospel, in Pro Ecclesia: A Jour- In fall 2019, Kathleen Coleman published two brief ar- read, Hedera displays a glossary of only those words which ology of the Achaemenid empire, and Emma Dench and nal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology 29:2 (April 2020). ticles, “The spelling of MELLIORA,” an appendix to the ranked at the lowest two points. m I a new graduate seminar on Macedonia, from the Bronze m excavation report for the 2017 season at Gerace in central Age to Late Antiquity. Sicily by Roger Wilson (UBC) in Mouseion 9.2, and “My- In terms of research, I have been working on my new Richard Tarrant thologizing death: Silvae and sarcophagi” in Flesheaters, the book project, provisionally titled “The Ancient Shore,” and Harry Morgan My current research is centered on Horace. A book on the proceedings of a conference on sarcophagi held at Berke- have delivered a number of related papers on the archae- My main research project at the moment is my book, pro- Odes for the Oxford Approaches series is in the final stages of ley and edited by Christopher Hallett. She also taught a ology and history of the Hellenistic Red Sea and Indian visionally entitled Music, Politics and Society in Ancient Rome, production and should appear in late spring or early summer. new course in the Program in General Education, GENED Ocean. Two co-edited volumes on the second-century which I hope to publish with Cambridge University Press I have begun work on a new critical edition of all of Horace 1131 “Loss,” which she has written about in detail on BCE southern Levant have now been completed – “The in the not-too-distant future. I have also written an article for the OCT series.