Online Version Princeton NEWSLETTER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS Spring 2012 Letter from the ChairClassics spatium. Only two of the faculty of ’96 are will migrate there after renovation. So we still here: the rest we have lost to other will either be moving out of, or expand- jobs, to retirement, or to the Elysian Fields ing within, East Pyne, but our fate is still (the beloved Sam Atkins, John Keaney, uncertain. and David Furley). The following breath- Concurrently, Firestone Library is un- less remarks are simply bullet points mark- dergoing massive renovation. Every book ing 15 years of change: in the building has been moved to reorder the collection—nostalgic note: Richardson • 1999-2006 we averaged about 14 has disappeared—and the third floor is due majors per undergraduate class. for gutting and renewal next year, with the old study rooms being replaced by a large • 2007-2012, the average number of new one in a different location. undergraduates has leapt to about 21. The above headlong praeteritio doesn’t mention many other changes even in • Currently we have 24 Seniors and 24 passing. Fortunately one of them comes Juniors. This uptick has meant strain to the rescue. Our brand new, thoroughly Ted Champlin, Chair on faculty time, a restructuring of rethought departmental website went live advising, and a planned increase in of- last spring: http://www.princeton.edu/ s adumbrated last year, we were fice support hours. classics/. There you will find details about subjected in May to the sympathetic some of the above and much more. It is Ainspection of our Advisory Council. More broadly, under the energetic of course a work eternally in progress, With their report in hand, we convened a leadership of department representative intended to promote community within daylong retreat in September to go over Brooke Holmes, we are adding a third the department and communication with every conceivable aspect of the department track in Ancient History to the major, with friends outside: if you have any thoughts, and its possible futures. The autumn was a a fourth in Linguistics in the pipeline; please pass them on. Lector intende: blur of hyperactivity as committees buzzed beefing up offerings in translation; and laetaberis. ■ about preparing for discussion when we establishing a full-scale Majors seminar. reconvened in December. From that discus- Under the equally energetic leader- sion and the mass of material and recom- ship of director of graduate studies Bob Inside this issue… mendations submitted by all my colleagues, Kaster, the graduate program has been I distilled a confidential self-study of the carefully restructured to reduce time to News from the Faculty ............................2 completion while maintaining happiness; department for the Dean of the Faculty. Senior Theses 2011 .................................5 With that in hand, our distinguished the various tracks have been rationalized Academic Review committee (Sue Alcock, and thoroughly revised; seminars have Faculty Bookshelf ....................................6 Brown University; Kirk Freudenburg, been streamlined to offer a clear menu of An Excavation in the Yale; Ruth Scodel, University of Michigan; introductory and advanced courses; and, Richard Saller, Stanford, chair) subjected as with the undergrad program, the effort Byzantine World ......................................7 us to two long days of close scrutiny in late continues to provide clear written docu- Dissertations ...........................................8 January. Now that they have submitted mentation and advice. their report, it is time to breathe deeply East Pyne is bursting at the seams. Graduate Student News .........................9 and to plan. Within the year, Green Hall on the other Classics Alumni Spotlight .....................10 Our last such review was in 1996. side of Washington Road will be vacated, 1996 to 2011: grande mortalis aevi and some of the departments in East Pyne Lectures & Events .................................11 2. Princeton Classics News from the Faculty Yelena Baraz Emmanuel Bourbouhakis Ted Champlin Marc Domingo Gygax Janet Downie Denis Feeney Yelena Baraz really quite thrilled to be here. I spent the signed up for another three years I spent the first half of 2011 as a visitor at better part of this past year on a fellowship as chair. the Institute for Advanced Study, a leave in Rome (where my wife Sara and I live), supported by Princeton and a grant from reading in the slightly rumpled library Marc Domingo Gygax the Loeb Classical Foundation. During of Palazzo Farnese, making headway on During the fall semester I served as the the spring, I was mainly occupied with various Byzantine projects, with occasional department’s seniors adviser for our 24 revisions of my book, A Written Republic: breaks to sail on weekends. The spring seniors concentrating in classics and clas- Cicero’s Philosophical Politics, which will saw me return to Dumbarton Oaks to pay sical studies. Together with AnneMarie be out from Princeton University Press in tribute to a doyen of Byzantine Studies, Luijendijk (Department of Religion) I the spring of 2012. I also wrote a paper on the inimitably erudite Ihor Sevcenko, with co-taught the Program in the Ancient “Discourse of Kingship in Late Republican a paper dedicated to his memorably witty World (PAW) graduate seminar, which Invective” for the Second Day of the Bad and insightful taxonomy of historians in this year was entitled “Weak belief, Dif- King conference, and presented expanded “Two Varieties of Historical Writing.” In fering Belief, Unbelief: Alexandria as a versions to a seminar at the Institute for early summer I bid a very fond farewell to Case Study”. We analyzed the interactions Advanced Study and the spring lecture of Freiburg and colleagues there after nearly between various religious groups and com- the New York Classical Club. Also in the three years of collaboration for which I munities in the city—Egyptians, Greeks, spring I accompanied Professor Nino will remain incredibly grateful. In my brief Pagans, Jews, and Christians—and had Zchomelidse and her freshman seminar, time so far at Princeton, I have taught as distinguished guest speakers Martha “Transformations of an Empire: Power, introduction to Classical Greek along with Himmelfarb (Princeton), Sandra Gambetti Religion, and the Arts of Medieval Rome”, a course in translation about the long cul- (CUNY-Staten Island), Christopher Haas on their field trip to Rome over spring tural legacy of Greek epic, titled “Homer (Villanova) and Ed Watts (Indiana). Our break. It was a fantastic trip: I learned a After Homer.” Post-classical and Byzantine partners in the parallel seminar offered at tremendous amount about medieval Rome, rhetoric and oratory, epistolography, and Oxford were Beate Dignas, Robert Parker visited the papal palace in Viterbo, and historiography are all sitting on my desk at and Guy Stroumsa, and in January we finally saw the Ara Pacis. After a summer present. If you think our interests inter- met with the graduate students from both spent mainly in copyediting and indexing, I sect, if you have questions, or better yet, sides of the Atlantic in Princeton for our was especially glad to get back to teaching answers, please drop by 034A East Pyne. traditional Oxford/Princeton workshop. In after a year of leave. In the fall, I taught November I participated in a round table a great group of students in a seminar on Edward Champlin at Yale, where we discussed Pierre Briant’s Plautus, where we had a lot of fun read- No excuses: Parkinson’s Law dictated Rostovtzeff lecture on Elias Bickerman. ing, laughing, and imagining how these the course of 2011 and chairman’s work Most of my recent research was devoted to things must have looked in performance expanded to fill the time available, as the study of modern historiography (the to the original audience. In November I hinted on the first page of this Newslet- generation of Bickerman as well as Catalan was invited to present some of my work on ter. The two papers mentioned last time historiography of the Enlightenment and Cicero at Northwestern University. The duly appeared. One, “Sex on Capri”, in the first half of the 19th century). During year concluded with a panel on “Intertexu- Transactions of the American Philologi- the winter break I had the chance to go to ality and Discontent” at the APA meeting cal Association, taking its start from two southern France to explore some Roman in Philadelphia. I co-organized this panel very naughty words supposedly invented archaeological sites. with a colleague from Amherst College, by Tiberius Caesar for private use, can Christopher van den Berg. The panel went best be described as hardcore philology. Janet Downie splendidly and was attended by over a The other, “Tiberius and the Heavenly After a refreshing and stimulating year of hundred people. Twins”, in the Journal of Roman Studies, leave, since September I’ve been back in explored the more romantic relationship the classroom—navigating the vast seas of Emmanuel Bourbouhakis of the second princeps with the gods Classical Mythology and dodging pirates My appearance in this newsletter as a Castor and Pollux, as performed for in a course on the Greek novel. Papers this member of the classics department could the Roman people in public. The latter academic year have included a contribution serve as an apt epilogue for 2011’s aca- will form a chapter in the much delayed to a Society for Biblical Literature panel on demic highlights. I came to Princeton last Tiberius on Capri, to be followed by a recently-discovered text by Galen—the fall, via Freiburg and Rome, in a bid to two others on mythological themes, one bio-bibliographic De Indolentia—and a broaden the post-classical and Byzantine portraying him as the wily Odysseus, contribution on narrative and divination repertoire of Classics and Hellenic Studies; the other as great Pan, the goat-god on in Graeco-Roman dreams for the meeting my abiding commitment to Greek, Latin, the margins of society who raises panic of the Midwest Consortium on Ancient and ancient history, as always, in tow.