NEWSLETTER 2017 From the Chair of the graduate students, here is a partial list for 2016/17: Elena Giusti (Latin), Astrid van Faculty Oyen (Archaeology) and Lacey Wallace Prof. Richard Hunter (Archaeology) have been appointed to Assistant Professorships at Warwick, Heraclitus is popularly believed to have Cornell and Lincoln respectively, and said that you cannot step into the same 3 of our graduate students have been river twice. It turns out, however, that See Inside... elected to Junior Research Fellowships you can become Chair of the Faculty of in Cambridge Colleges: Anna Judson Impact of the Ancient City Classics twice, though whether it is the 2 same Faculty now as it was in 2003 and (Linear B and the history of Greek, 2004 when I was last Chair is at least Gonville and Caius), Maya Feile Tomes doubtful. It is not true that ‘everything (Latin American poetry, Christ’s – cf. is in flux’ but some things are. For one, p. 10 inside); Livia Tagliapietra (the it seems a busier, fuller place than I Greek language in Italy, Jesus College). remember, in part because of the number It is the presence of such remarkable of externally-funded research projects younger scholars (and, of course, at times which employ post-doctoral researchers everyone seems to me to be a younger and/or train PhD students. The Fac- scholar…) that makes the Faculty a very Greek Epic of the Roman Empire ulty currently houses the Impact of exciting place to work. No less remark- 5 the Ancient City (described at greater able are the careers that Classics gradu- length inside) and Context and Relation- ships between Early Writing Systems, ates follow outside academia, and we are both funded by the European Research currently expanding our website archive Council, three AHRC-funded projects of ‘Life after Classics’: there is a small on the Greek Epic of the Roman Empire, taster inside recording the very different Greek in Italy, and Roman Republican paths followed by two of our alumni. Cities, and another archaeological pro- ject on the site of Lerna, funded by the The diversity of the current Faculty is, American School of Classical Studies and however, also a reminder that uncer- tainty hangs over us, as over the Univer- The Bible and Antiquity the Newton Trust. This hive of activity 6 means that one of the rhythms which sity more generally. Whatever one’s view structures the Chair’s life is a round of of Brexit, and whatever arrangements formal and informal meetings with pro- finally emerge, it would be an enormous ject-members to see how they are getting loss to the vibrancy of the Faculty if we on. The Faculty is a much richer place were no longer attractive, and able to for all of this, and the Chair much better extend the warmest welcome, to students informed about the breadth of the field and researchers from all over the world: of research in Classics – if also about HR the cosmopolitanism of Cambridge is regulations! one of its great strengths. ‘We even let One thing which never changes is the Australians in’ was how I used to be Life after Classics pleasure that we derive from the aca- teased: fortunately, we still do! 9 demic success of mem- bers of the Faculty. In the 2016 Senior Inaugural Lecture Academic Promotions round, Emily Gowers Prof. James Clackson (Latin) and Christo- Professor of Comparative Philology pher Kelly (Roman ‘Dangerous Lunatics’: history) were promoted to Personal Profes- Cambridge and Comparative sorships and Lucia Philology Classics in China Prauscello (Greek) to a Watch again at... 10 Readership. As for our www.classics.cam.ac.uk/directory/alumni 2017 newsletter.indd 1 24/05/2017 11:43:14 teries in Egypt, will look at the cities of the early Islamic Eastern Mediterranean, ANCIENT CITIES while Suna Cagaptay, an architectural historian of the late Byzantine and early Prof. Andrew Elizabeth Key Fowden's on late antique/ Ottoman period, will explore the cities of early Islamic Syria and Ottoman Ath- Western Asia Minor and Thrace. Edward Wallace-Hadrill ens. A team of postdocs extends this Coghill, currently completing a doctorate on medieval Arabic literature on Egypt, The Greek and Roman world was fa- range. Javier Martínez Jiménez works on will explore the rich Arabic tradition mously a world of cities: life in cities was Visigothic and Umayyad Spain, including of thought on cities. A PhD position is synonymous with civilization. Modern Mérida, one of the best examples of these urbanism is in many ways so remote from transformations. His latest book is the soon to be filled on the cities of Italy. The that of antiquity that we may ask whether most recent and up-to-date archaeologial project also benefits greatly from the ex- the ancient city had an impact at all on catalogue of the Roman aqueducts in pertise of many colleagues in Cambridge and beyond, including Martin Millett, Robin Osborne and Alessandro Launaro in Classics, Amira Bennison, an expert on Islamic Spain and North Africa in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and Rosamond McKitterick in History; and from a full-time administra- tor and researcher, Alex Rocca. Over the last three months, with the team gradually coming together, the project is beginning to take shape, with a series of seminars that have given a taste of the excitement of bringing together many disciplines. How did the cities of Spain fare under their new Visigothic rulers in the fifth to eighth centuries, followed by their Umayyad Arab conquerors in the eighth? On the one hand there is Peutinger map of the Roman world, showing the network of roads and cities around Rome a contraction of the number of active centres, and a loss of technology, seen most clearly in the inability to sustain the contemporary city. A century ago, Spain and Portugal. Sam Ottewill-Souls- the water supply through aqueducts. But archaeologists felt the answer lay in urban by, with a doctorate on the relations of to read Isidore's Etymologies of the early planning, and above all the orthogonal the Franks with Islamic Spain, is well seventh century, the city could still be grid. Yet there was surely more to ancient positioned to trace thinking about the described in its classical elements, and cities than the grid plan, especially as city in the early medieval west. Louise the Visigothic kings not only enforced some of the greatest cities, Athens, Rome Blanke, with experience of excavation at Roman legislation on city administration, and Constantinople, made little or no use Jerash and a current project on monas- but founded new cities, starting with of it. From one perspective, late antiqui- ty saw the end of the ancient city; from another, it proved remarkably resilient, adapting differently to changing condi- tions in the Christianized West and the Islamized East. The physical traces and the recollected image of antiquity exer- cised a powerful influence, not with one outcome, but with kaleidoscopic varia- tions through space and time. The project is a tale of many cities, and so wide-rang- ing in scope that it requires a team of specialists with expertise that ranges from archaeology to cultural history, from late antiquity to the present, and from western Europe to the Middle East and North Africa. It is only thanks to the exceptional po- tential of a European Research Council grant that it has been possible to dream of such a project. My own longstanding Map of the world by Al-Idrisi, twelfth century Arab geographer, showing Spain and North Africa work on Italian cities is balanced by 2 2017 newsletter.indd 2 24/05/2017 11:43:15 Focus on Research Yung In Chae I research the intersection of the Classics and critical theory—that is, how we can draw upon the ancient world in order to think about society—with particular interests in feminism and environmen- Athens: Olympieion and mihrab of open-air mosque in 1819, from Louis Dupré, ‘Le Temple de Jupiter Olympien talism. et l’Acropolis d’Athènes.’ Photo credit: Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation (www.travelogues.gr) In the course of my MPhil, this has taken the form of essays about genealogy in Reccopolis, the name of which combines transporting the inhabitants of the old Plato’s Republic, philology in nineteenth- a Gothic name (Reccared) with a highly city to houses identical to their old ones. and twentieth-century Germany, and classical termination. In coming weeks Mythical it may be, but it illustrates the ecofeminism in Sappho. I am currently our attention will turn to Antioch, which potency of the image of the Roman city in writing a thesis on the classical references enjoys a boom in late antiquity. Sacked in the Islamic East as much as the Visigothic in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, a 540 by the Persian Chosroes (Khosrow), West. continuation of the project that I started Procopius describes how he carried off last year as a Master’s student at the École precious marbles to Persia. By the tenth The story we wish to explore is neither des hautes études en sciences sociales century, this story has grown in the Arab one of decline and fall, nor indeed of in Paris, France. There I focused on De historian Al-Tabari into a tale of how the implausible continuity, but of the varied Beauvoir’s classical education: I dove into Sasanian shah founded a new city called and surprising ways in which the ancient the archives of the Biblothèque nation- Al-Rummiyah ('Roman') with the materi- city has exercised a hold over the imagi- ale and recovered her notebooks from als from Antioch and on its precise plan, nations of diverse times and cultures.