Spring 2020 Letter from the Chair by Michael Flower wo Thousand and Nineteen proved to be an eventful year admission. The both for the department and for me personally. On July 1, Department of Classics, T I took over as Chair, well aware that filling the shoes of my and the other Princeton predecessor would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, given departments that are Andrew Feldherr’s selfless dedication to the Department and following our lead, his many contributions to its welfare. Working with him during are demonstrating my three years as Director of Graduate Studies helped prepare our conviction that me for this position, in so far as anyone is ever prepared for the students who come many tasks and responsibilities that the job entails. I am very from underprivileged grateful for his mentorship, and I only hope that I have been half and underrepresented as effective in providing advice and support to our current DGS, backgrounds can and Johannes Haubold. will succeed. Readers of this newsletter may Having supportive colleagues and a truly dedicated, and highly well wonder why we professional, staff has also made a huge difference. Christopher are accepting only one Valentine took over from Kai Laidlaw in the fall as our Tehnical new student into the Support Specialist, and all of us in the Department feel very pre-doctoral program fortunate indeed that he decided to join us. There are no other next year. The answer is new faces this academic year, but with any luck we will be joined lack of funding, since pre-doctoral students pay the same tuition next year by a new colleague with expertise in ancient Philosophy as students who are already in the regular program. Only the (replacing our colleague Christian Wildberg who now teaches generosity of a donner could enable us to admit two new students at the University of Pittsburg). Members of the Department every year as a matter of course. continue to accrue honors, which readers of this annual newsletter surely have come to expect. In September, Barbara Graziosi All of you are probably aware that enrollments in the delivered the extremely prestigious Townsend lectures at Cornell, Humanities are reaching record lows across the United States as on the topic of “Homecoming and Homemaking in the Ancient more students turn to Computer Science, Engineering, and the Mediterranean”; During the 2018-2019 academic year Brooke Natural Sciences. Let me then assure you that we are not sitting Holmes held both a Guggenheim fellowship and a fellowship on past laurels, but are taking the initiative in reaching out to at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and undergraduate students of every stripe. That is, we are developing Writers at the New York Public Library; and Harriet Flower was more, and more innovative, courses in translation that will appeal awarded the 2019 Goodwin Award of Merit by the Society for to students in different disciplines, we are hosting events (such Classical Studies for her book The Dancing Lares and the Serpent as dinners with faculty, movie nights, and trips to museums), and in the Garden. Only two other sitting Princeton faculty members we are advocating whenever and wherever possible for the study have received the Goodwin award since its inception: David of the Greek and Latin languages as something both enjoyable Magie in 1951 Josh Billings in 2014. in itself and still useful in the twenty-first century. Despite the fact that I have spent my entire career studying modes of In many ways, the highlight of this academic year so far was divination cross-culturally, I cannot foresee what the future holds the second annual Fagles lecture delivered by the poet Ishion for Classics. But there is one thing that I am able to predict with Hutchinson. Robert Fagles was a professor of English and perfect certitude. My colleagues and I are, and will always be, Comparative Literature at Princeton from 1960 to 2002. He was eternally grateful for the help, support, and encouragement of our both a poet himself and one of the most accomplished translators undergraduate and graduate alums. You are the living proof that of Greek and Roman poetry into the English language, as well as the education this Department offers has value both in and beyond being an extraordinarily gifted teacher. Professor Hutchinson is the academy. the author of two widely acclaimed poetry collections, Far District, published in 2010, and House of Lords and Commons in 2017. His public lecture eloquently addressed the question, “The Classics Can Console?” The title alludes to the last line of Derek Walcott’s famous poem “Sea Grapes”: “The classics can console. But not enough.” In addition, Ishion met with our graduate students and Inside this issue also gave what was, by all accounts, a truly splendid lecture on the Aeneid to undergraduate students in the Humanities Sequence. Faculty News ........................................................................................ 3 On the graduate front, we continue to attract students of Graduate Student News ................................................................... 7 outstanding talents from many and diverse backgrounds. This fall we enrolled our first two pre-doctoral fellows. A third fellow Alumni Spotlight ................................................................................ 8 will be joining us next fall. The Pre-Doctoral Fellowship is for students from historically underrepresented groups in the field of Faculty Publications........................................................................... 9 Classics in all of its subfields (literature, history, and philosophy). Summer Research 2019 .................................................................10 Its special, and unique, feature is that it comes with an offer of regular admission for the year following after the fellowship. I Graduate Dissertations ...................................................................11 am very proud to announce that sixteen other departments at Princeton initiated a similar program this year, following the lead In Memoriam......................................................................................13 of Princeton Classics! Those departments, like ours, are including an offer of regular admission. This is really extraordinary, and Senior Theses .....................................................................................14 worth bragging about, because while many other Universities offer one or two-year bridge programs, Princeton is the only Lectures & Events .............................................................................15 university that does not make these students reapply for regular 2 Faculty News Yelena Baraz publishing by the end of the year. This Annual Meeting in Washington DC I will After many years together, I leaves me with the exciting prospect of co-present with Sarah Johnson (PhD am glad to say goodbye to, new academic projects on the horizon, for student) and Leina Thurn (‘20) the and send into the world, a which readers will have to stay tuned to preliminary results of our work on the book entitled Reading future editions of this newsletter… pithoi of Morgantina. This is a year of Roman Pride, which should innovative teaching. In the fall, I co-taught appear in 2020 in the Emmanuel C. Bourbouhakis with Matthew Larsen (Society of Fellows/ Emotions of the Past series I am currently trying to Religion) a new course “Incarceration in published by Oxford University Press. The make the most of a Antiquity,” which incorporated digital book approaches pride-like emotions in sabbatical year into which I humanities and included a trip to Greece. Roman discourse from a variety of had deferred many an In the spring, I am teaching a graduate perspectives and traces their attribution to ambition. Foremost among seminar on the Roman economy and an people, places and institutions as well as these is a book taking shape undergraduate course, “The Science of the role they play in literary texts. My about letter-writing in Roman History,” a hands-on course that attention is now shifting to a monograph mediaeval Byzantium as both a social and bridges STEM and humanities. In Spring that explores the functioning of tradition in literary practice. Some of the questions 2019 we launched the Asian and Asian the Latin pastoral of Calpurnius Siculus. I surrounding the appropriate framing of American Classical Caucus, and starting in am also working on smaller scale projects this project are slated to appear as chapters 2020 I will serve on the Steering on Lucan, one on his use of Cicero as a in edited volumes and journal articles I am Committee of the Women’s Classical character and a source, and another on his revising for more immediate publication. Caucus. presentation of inspiration and prophesy, a Any time left over will be dedicated to at topic that is becoming more generally of least two side efforts. The first is editing, Marc Domingo Gygax interest to me. Both the Calpurnius project with my Firestone colleague, David In 2019 I published and the work on Cicero in Lucan have had Jenkins, the Grammatica et Rhetorica of “Euergetism and the me thinking about intertextuality and the 11th-century Byzantine polymath embedded economy of fragments, and I am presenting these ideas Michael Psellos, for the Teubner series, the Greek polis”, The at an interdisciplinary workshop on which involves working with a large Extramercantile Economies , hermeneutics at Oxford. This year I am number