Photo (c) Cosetta Cadau
CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND NEWSLETTER
Editorial Dear CAI members, I hope that this bulletin finds you and your loved ones safe and well. At the time of writing, it seems that the worst of the pandemic has passed and we can look forward to an enjoyable summer. In Classics, we have the opportunity for rest and reflection. Here, Professor Emeritus David Scourfield reminisces about his career and shares his observations about the development of Classics in Ireland (pp. 5-6); and Professor Isabelle Torrance and Dr Donncha O'Rourke describe how both past and new directions in Irish Classics have shaped their ERC-funded project 'Classical Influences and Irish Culture' (pp. 2-4). In addition, our Irish Branch, University, and affiliates' latest initiatives, all online (including the IIHSA Annual Day School, held in April via Zoom after cancellation last year, left), are reported on pp. 9-11. With best wishes for as fine a summer as the view above, of the Punico-Roman harbour of Tharros, Sardinia, courtesy of Cosetta Cadau, Selga Medenieks
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IRELAND'S CLASSICAL TRADITIONS
DAVID SCOURFIELD: CLASSICS IN IRELAND
BRANCH & UNIVERSITY NEWS
JUNE 2021
IRELAND'S CLASSICAL TRADITIONS: NEW PERSPECTIVES By DONNCHA O'ROURKE and ISABELLE TORRANCE
Readers of this newsletter, and anyone anywhere with a scholarly interest in Ireland’s relationship with the Classics, will likely be familiar with a work entitled Ireland and the Classical Tradition by the late TCD classicist and senator W. B. Stanford (1910-1984). A magnificent labour of love, it delivers in prose of apparently effortless elegance a learned and compelling history of the classical footprint in Irish cultural and intellectual life down to 1975, covering spheres as diverse as education and scholarship, literature in Irish and English, art and architecture, political activism and religion. As a pioneering foray into the vast cultural history of Irish engagements with classical sources, Stanford’s work was in many respects ahead of its time. This is evidenced by Stanford’s inclusive instinct regarding what counts as ‘classical tradition’. The ostensibly democratic approach of Stanford’s broad-ranging work aligns his analysis with reception studies avant la lettre, since the framework of reception studies emphasises the contexts of both the received and receiving cultures, as well as the diversity of engagement witnessed in the latter. Equally, and in ways that illuminate how classical reception differs from the model of the classical tradition, Stanford is also very much of his time. This is particularly apparent in his more or less implicit privileging of the ‘pastness’ rather than the ‘presentness’ of the Classics, and of a certain kind of (generally elite) education as a, or rather the only, means of accessing classical material. Recent research on eighteenthand nineteenth-century Ireland by Laurie O’Higgins in The Irish Classical Self (Oxford, 2017), however, has dismantled this kind of privileging by showing, contrariwise, that the lower nonelite classes in Ireland were often well versed in Latin if not Greek. That being said, all researchers on Ireland’s relationship with the classical world still need to consult Stanford, and his extraordinary work is of lasting value. The task of editing a set of contemporary approaches to Irish classicisms in the twentieth century, as pursued by the eighteen different scholars who contributed chapters to Classics and Irish Politics, 1916-2016 (Oxford, 2020), has been an opportunity to consider Stanford’s legacy anew as a milestone from which his grateful successors can measure the distance travelled then and since. It is perhaps especially in the arena of politics – the lens through which the aforementioned volume examines Irish receptions of the Classics – that Stanford, as the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman and representative of Ireland’s Protestant community in Seanad Éireann from 1948
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to 1969, could see more acutely than anyone the delicate political position (and potential) of the Classics in the Irish context. ‘There is another aspect of the classical tradition in Ireland that has special relevance in the present unhappily divided state of the country’, he writes in his introduction, perhaps aspirationally as much as objectively positioning the classical tradition as ‘an area of common ground in which both sides shared similar ideals and admired similar examples’. Following on from this proposition, new research is being conducted on the potential of Platonism to transcend sectarianism across the thought of significant Irish intellectuals, including such disparate figures as the Anglican bishop George Berkeley, the devout Catholic translator Stephen MacKenna, the hermeticist poet W. B. Yeats, and the post-religious philosopher Iris Murdoch, in a tradition that looks back to Eriugena and medieval Ireland. Platonism is one of nine thematic strands of investigation in the Classical Influences and Irish Culture project funded by the European Research Council and hosted at Aarhus University in Denmark. (To learn more, visit https://clic. au.dk/ and follow @CLIC_ERC on Twitter.) In the troubled years that followed the first publication of Ireland and the Classical Tradition, Stanford’s vision of an ecumenical classicism was to be espoused by the many Northern Irish writers for whom classical
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models provided a medium through which to explore the psychological and physical violence of civil war in a way that transcended partisan politics. Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy (1990), which adapts Sophocles’ Philoctetes with one eye on South African apartheid and another on divisions closer to home, transmits a message about reconciliation, while Michael Longley’s ‘Ceasefire’ (1994) compresses Homer’s account of the meeting between Achilles and Priam in a way that captures the swirling emotions and implications surrounding the recent IRA ceasefire. The message of reconciliation in Heaney’s The Cure at Troy continues to be quoted by world leaders, most recently by Joe Biden, whose reading from this play went viral after his election victory. It could be said, however, that Stanford’s diplomacy and idealism occlude some of the darker pages of Ireland’s classical tradition. While the book includes an account of how Stanford’s TCD predecessor, J. P. Mahaffy, vetoed Patrick Pearse from delivering within the college walls what would, ironically, have been a classicising eulogy of Thomas Davis, no account is given of Mahaffy’s disparaging stance against the Irish language. While the wrongs of this controversy fall outside the remit of the ‘classical tradition’,
consideration of the role played by Classics as received in the wider ideological currents of the time will show that Mahaffy weaponised his discipline against the Irish language revival, and so did much to fuel an antipathy to the study of classical language and culture in those quarters well into the next century, despite the endeavours of a progressivist translation programme overseen by An Gúm. This would no doubt have been sorely regretted by an educationalist and idealist such as Stanford. The consolidation of the Classics as an imperialist subject, used to inculcate in impressionable minds what Declan Kiberd has called the ‘SPQR mentality’ of the British Empire, was all the more regrettable given the scope for a counter-narrative, well documented by Stanford and promoted by other figures such as Brian O’Nolan, of medieval Irish scholarship in the Classics. The way in which that narrative is told, of course, reveals its own story, and few would now subscribe to the extreme but once popularised view that the Irish saved western civilisation. Indeed, an approach informed by reception studies might wish to reframe many of the case-studies in Ireland and the Classical Tradition as illustrations of how the Classics are pressed into the service of one ideology or another, and so become an agent in the ideological flashpoints of Ireland’s history. For example, 16th century testimonies by Edmund Campion and Richard Stanihurst as to an irregular vernacular Latin in Ireland might be said to attest, rather against the grain of their reports, not only to a highly evolved HibernoLatin, but also to an ‘othering’ assumption that classical Latin is the only touchstone of non-Irish civilisation. A man of Stanford’s intellectual sensitivity was, of course, aware of how, as he puts it, ‘as in Holy Scripture, one can find precepts for wide divergencies of doctrine in all classical history’. In his analysis of how Oscar Wilde’s classical affiliation was manipulated against him in the dock, Stanford enlarges to a reflection that is remarkable in an Ireland still some twenty years away from the decriminalisation of homosexuality: ‘Yet to blame the pagan authors for this is only to blame life as it is.’ We might recall, by contrast, how the aforementioned Mahaffy was a major influence on the young Wilde, but later refused to support him after his downfall, calling him ‘the one blot on my tutorship’. Since then, a countervailing use of classical models to give voice to the excluded and marginalised has been one of Ireland’s major contributions on the cultural, intellectual, and political stage. Notable, for instance, is a 1920 production of Euripides’ Trojan Women by the Dublin Drama League, with Maud Gonne playing Hecuba in a role that might well have exposed the brutalities of colonialism but whose reception refocuses our attention on the treatment of women in Irish society. Brendan Kennelly’s 1993 version relates the same play to the ‘Trojan women’ of rural Irish
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villages who are both victims and agents in their own oppression, while the Trojan women of Marina Carr’s Hecuba (2015) are sexually liberated yet, for all that, still prisoners. Ireland’s capacity to reinvent and revivify the ideological power of the classics in such ways as these may catch traditionalists off-guard, but it is as old as the Irish Classical Tradition itself. This tension may be sensed in the concluding remarks of Stanford’s review of old, middle, and eighteenth-century Irish-language versions of classical tales: ‘This Gaelic nonchalance may seem irresponsible, even outrageous, to modern classical readers taught to venerate the ancient authors as supreme in their class and to translate their works as faithfully as possible. But what should be recognised in these Irish versions is that here we have a new literary fusion which is both scholarly and creative, derivative and inventive, classical and Celtic … the conventional categories are broken down and new modes, sometimes monstrous or barbaric by conventional standards, come to birth.’ As Stanford invokes here Horace’s Ars Poetica and its tongue-in-cheek description of hybrid artistic creations, we sense an Irish classical scholar caught between two worlds. Yet the notion of hybridity remains thoroughly relevant both to classical reception studies and to the exposition of Irish identities. Two contrasting examples of classical reception in Ireland from 2020 may serve to demonstrate its continued vibrancy and diversity by way of conclusion here. Marina Carr’s The Boy should have premiered at The Abbey Theatre in autumn 2020 in a production directed by Catríona McLaughlin, but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is billed as ‘loosely based on all three Theban plays’ in ‘one epic theatrical presentation’. The story begins and ends with a boy ‘traumatically stolen from his family’. This must be Chrysippus, the boy abducted and raped by Laius, whose crime is often identified as the origin of the curse on the house of Oedipus. In the context of national recognition of the systemic abuse of children in state- and church-run homes, this myth will be timely. For the Irish-language community, on the other hand, 2020 saw the publication of Plato’s Apology and Crito in Irish (Socraitéas: ‘Ar a Chosaint Féin’) and of Cicero’s Catilinarian Orations (Táinseamh Chaitilína), while a podcast of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s Irish translation of Aeschylus’ Persians featured in the 2020 Dublin Theatre Festival, an instance of reception which, in this Decade of Centenary Commemorations, links Greece and Ireland as nations which both successfully repelled imperial invaders. Ancient Greece and Rome clearly still have much to offer the Irish community in all its diversity. The classical tradition, and new perspectives such as these, combine to form a rich cultural history of hybrid classical-Irish heritage as each new generation explores the possibilities of reading and expressing contemporary experiences through the lens of cultures past.
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CAI LATIN SUMMER SCHOOL 21 June – 2 July 2021 The Classical Association of Ireland is pleased to announce the 2021 Summer School in Latin, which will take place on Zoom between 21 June and 2 July. This course is designed for secondary school students between the ages of 15 and 18, and provides an exciting opportunity to learn Latin through a twoweek immersion with qualified, inspiring, and fun teachers! If you are not studying Latin or Classics, but you are interested in ancient languages, this is the place for you! Whether or not you are studying Classical Studies or the new Junior Certificate Classics, the Summer School offers an exciting opportunity to explore the culture of the Romans through their language. Perhaps you want to improve your language learning skills, or understanding, communicating, and writing in English? Or you are exploring your academic future? If you are you thinking about studying Classical Civilisation, Archaeology, Classical Languages, Ancient or Medieval History, Philosophy, Religion, History of Art, or Romance languages in college, the CAI Summer school is a great place to start! Over the course of two weeks, you will immerse yourself in the language of Rome and engage in a variety of fun activities, led by experienced and passionate teachers. There will be interactive and online games, singing contests, Latin cartoons, and a bit of spoken Latin, too! Customised materials are provided. After two weeks, students will be able to read simple Latin texts and have sufficient knowledge of the language to continue studying it independently or enter a higherlevel course. • Contact hours: three classes per day for two weeks • Minimum age: 15 • Course fee: €200 • Information and registration: Dr Cosetta Cadau E-mail: cosetta.cadau@mu.ie or visit the Classical Association of Ireland at:
www.classicalassociation.ie
CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
Reflections on Classics in Ireland 1998-2021 By DAVID SCOURFIELD One of the curious consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic has been its impact on our perception of time. How often have we heard people say, ‘It seems to have been going on for ever’, with a sense of stasis, a feeling that nothing has changed since it began? And yet in fact much has changed, not all of it bad. People have adapted, and quickly: we’ve got used to new patterns of behaviour and new ways of interacting, and some of these (think ‘Zoom’) will doubtless continue to shape our personal and professional lives even after the pandemic is over. Stasis is an illusion. Classics lends itself easily to a similar misperception, partly because of the distance between the Greco-Roman world and our own and the apparent fixity of those familiar ancient remains; but as teachers and researchers in the field know very well, new perspectives continually arise, if not necessarily in a smooth, uninterrupted flow. How, then, has Classics changed, in the twenty-odd years since I arrived in Ireland to take up my post in Maynooth in 1998? And how has Classics changed in Ireland specifically – institutionally as well as intellectually – in that time? Here are a few thoughts, looking back from the more relaxed (but no less busy) uplands of ‘retirement’. The context It’s self-evident that the context in which the study of antiquity takes place in Ireland has changed enormously in the last quarter-century. Irish society is much more diverse now than then, ethnically and culturally; referendums have demonstrated that it is more socially liberal; religious influences have waned; the university sector has expanded significantly. A few snapshots from my time at Maynooth may serve to reflect this general direction of travel. When I was appointed, it was to a post in what was still St Patrick’s College (I was actually one of the two last subject Professors to be appointed under the auspices of the bishops; the fact that my doctoral thesis concerned the letters of St Jerome can’t have hurt). By the time I arrived, the Department of Ancient Classics was a unit of NUI Maynooth, since rebranded as Maynooth University; nonetheless, a couple of ancien régime clerical Professors still ruled their particular fiefdoms. The student body numbered less than 5000, about a third of its size today. The campus demographic was almost entirely white (this in particular was quite startling to me, coming from a large, multi-ethnic, urban university in South Africa). The traces of a rather dusty ‘Classics in Translation’ approach could still
be observed in Greek and Roman Civilization courses; ancient history was mostly political. Four new staff appointments in a little over two years helped to reshape the programme hugely, but the telling moment for me personally was the response by a first-year class that included many mature students to a new course unit (‘modules’ had not yet been invented) on ‘Love and Death in the Ancient World’, with much supporting visual material, some of it very graphic: fascinated, on occasion startled, challenged by the social and cultural contrasts. Horizons were in the process of widening; to this Classics made its own small contribution. Challenges and opportunities Yet Classics itself has faced significant challenges in recent years, as it has over many decades in many countries. In Ireland, Classics in the university sector (I cannot comment in a properly informed way on the position in schools beyond saying that the recent overhaul of the Classical Civilization syllabuses promises to be highly invigorating) has had to contend with the introduction of new subjects and the relaxation of degree structures, leading to increased competition. The economic downturn following the 2008 financial crisis was not beneficial to the humanities. The ‘Gladiator factor’ which boosted interest in the early 2000s (when student numbers in the Maynooth Department reached their peak) has largely worn off. We still lament the closure of the Department of Classics at Queen’s University Belfast nearly 20 years ago, while some departments in the Republic have been downsized. Restructuring within the Royal Irish Academy has meant a less prominent place for Classics: first, the Greek and Latin Studies Committee morphed into the Classical and Near Eastern Studies Committee; now the subject is represented by three members on the Historical Studies Committee. The annual Classics colloquium in Academy House has disappeared in the process. But it is all too easy to turn on the gloom and doom and assert a narrative of decline. Changing situations often generate creative responses. While summer schools in Greek or Latin or both have been a feature of the Irish classical landscape for many years, we can note the success of the quite recently founded Belfast Summer School, which, using social media very effectively, has been attracting a strong and enthusiastic following, and has capitalised superbly in the past year on the need to deliver teaching remotely. 2020 saw the Dublinbased ClassicsNow festival, another outreach initiative that overcame the restrictions of the pandemic by taking online form. In the research arena, Ireland has benefited from the embedding of IRC postdoctoral fellowships and PhD scholarships in the academic culture, and the establishment of EU funding possibilities. Internationally, conferences are now (even in the time of Covid, thanks to
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the available technologies) such a part of the fabric that the annual (originally biannual) meetings of the Hibernian Hellenists which offered such an important forum for sharing classical research on our island for 50 years (19632013) are probably not much missed, except socially. Research in Classics in Ireland is indeed perhaps more vibrant now than ever before. A changing field Amid such cultural and institutional changes and intellectual developments in other areas, it is natural that what we understand by ‘Classics’ itself should have been changing (the name itself has – very reasonably – been under scrutiny lately). Here, finally, are three broad ways in which I think that that understanding has changed, or continued to change, in the first decades of the 21st century. 1. In keeping with historical approaches outside our field, attention is focused a little less on ‘Greece’ and ‘Rome’ and a little more on the Mediterranean as a region. Beyond that, too, the classical tent has been opened up to take in cultures that are not just ‘classical’ in our historically limited sense: Persia, for example, or the Arab world. Alongside the geographical, there is a broader chronological spread: ‘late Antiquity’ has become recognised as a central area within Classics, extending as far as the seventh or eighth centuries; The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature, which is in preparation, will seek to cover the period from AD 100 to AD 700. Horizons are wider, periodisations different; we see more of a continuum, in keeping with an increasing acceptance that ancient Greece and Rome are not supremely important, however influential they may have been on later European culture. Similarly, a recent book (Edith Hall and Henry Stead’s A People’s History of Classics) has sought to examine working-class engagements with Classics in Britain and Ireland from 1689 to 1939, challenging the notion that it was an exclusive possession of elites. 2. There has been a move to greater interdisciplinarity, with an enhanced awareness that the tools of classical research range far beyond the ability to read a text in the original Greek or Latin (important as that clearly is). The insights of the social sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology) are all employed in the study of antiquity: in ancient religion, for example, or the family or slavery, and even literature, where the work of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has been influential. Other work, on the demography of the ancient world, for instance, utilises quantitative and statistical techniques; the importance of ‘digital humanities’ is uncontested. 3. The most far-reaching development in Classics since the 1990s has been the explosive growth of classical reception studies, which considers the numerous ways in which Greco-Roman antiquity has been ‘received’ in later
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cultures and shaped our understandings of ancient texts, artefacts, and events – of antiquity itself. This is an area in which Ireland, with its long and rich history of engagement with the classical world – from the early Middle Ages to the present day – can make and is already making a distinctive contribution to scholarship; of particular note is the major European Research Council-funded project ‘Classical Influences and Irish Culture’, based in Denmark but Irish-led (see pp. 2-4 of this Newsletter). Classics is not what it was. It is the same and different all at once; and for all the ups and downs, it is in some respects better now than it has ever been. As it has often shown, it is in its (and our) capacity to adapt to circumstance that its enduring strength lies.
David Scourfield is Professor Emeritus of Classics at Maynooth University, where he held the Chair of Classics from 1998 until his retirement in 2020. He was Chair of the Classical Association of South Africa in 1997-8, and is an honorary Vice-President of the (UK) Classical Association, which he served as Chair of Council from 2007 to 2013. He has represented the Royal Irish Academy on the International Commission of the Thesaurus linguae Latinae since 2002. He has particular interests in late antiquity, the Greek and Roman novel, and classical receptions in 20th-century English literature, with E. M. Forster a central focus of attention. Current projects include the preparation of a new edition of Forster’s novel The Longest Journey for Cambridge University Press.
CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
FROM BRUFF TO THE BALKANS James David Bourchier (1850-1920): native of Bruff, Co. Limerick, and Bulgarian hero Last 20 December was the anniversary of the death of James David Bourchier, the Irish journalist and political activist, who was born on 18 December 1850 in Baggotstown, near Bruff, Co. Limerick. Bourchier was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and on graduation was awarded a gold medal for Classics. He won a scholarship to Cambridge where he studied Latin and Greek and completed his classical training. He was for some years Assistant Master at Eton College but owing to a hearing disability he found teaching difficult and he became a journalist and Balkan correspondent for the London Times. “To a friend who asked him how he was able, despite his deafness, to act as the Times correspondent, he replied that as everything you hear in the Balkans is a lie, his infirmity has been a help rather than a hindrance to his work and had saved him from transmitting false reports to Printing House-square.” The second half of the nineteenth century was a turbulent time in the history of the Balkans. Among the revolutions and revolts that took place were: the Herzegovinian rebellion 1875-1877; the MontenegrinOttoman War 1876-1878; the Greek North Macedonian Rebellion 1878; the Epirus Revolt 1878; and the Cretan Revolt 1878. After Bourchier left his teaching post at Eton, he settled in Sofia, Bulgaria. He was an honourary member of the Sofia Journalists society and was instrumental in the foundation of the Balkan League in 1911-1912, which was the catalyst for the Balkan alliance that resulted in the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Subsequently he acted as a diplomat in negotiations between the Balkan states. He remained in Sofia throughout the Balkan Wars, until Great Britain declared war against Bulgaria in 1915. During the First World War he worked as the Times' South Russia correspondent. In 1918 Bourchier retired from the Times and returned to Ireland, residing in Castlecomber, County Kilkenny. In 1919 he advocated for Bulgarian interests at the Paris Peace Conference. The following year saw him return to his beloved Sofia, where he died. The government declared a day of national mourning and held a state funeral. Bourchier is the only foreigner to have been honoured with a burial at the great Orthodox monastery in
Rila. Among the places named in his honour are Bourchier Peak on Rila Mountain, Boulevard James Bourchier and James Bourchier Metro station in Sofia, and Bourchier Cove on Smith Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. His name and image appeared on stamps and even on cigarette boxes (O’Brien, p. 154). Decorations received by Bourchier include: Officer of the Order of St. Alexander of Bulgaria, Commander of the Order of the Redeemer of Greece, Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Danilo of Montenegro, and Commander of the Order of the Crown of Romania. Limerick historian Martin O’Brien recently published the biography James David Bourchier: The History of the Bulgarian National Hero Born in Limerick, Ireland (pictured above). The book was launched online on 16 April and was attended by the Bulgarian Ambassador. Other useful sources for Bourchier's life story include the Dictionary of Irish Biography: https://www.dib.ie; and a biographical article by F. C. Giffin in The Historian, vol. 27, pp. 1-20. Paula Keane www.classicalassociation.ie
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Classical Association
Notice of Annual General Meeting An Annual General Meeting of the Association will take place online upon a date to be circulated to all members on the register held by the Membership Secretary. The Agenda and Minutes of the last AGM, held at St. Angela’s College, Sligo, on 16 August 2019, will be circulated with the notice of date. No AGM was held in 2020 due to the Covid-19 situation. The Secretary notifies members that nominations and motions will be received under the following provisions of the Association’s Rules. Article 12 – Nominations for CAI Council The officers and four ordinary members of the Council are elected at the Annual General Meeting. The Council has made nominations under this Article as follows:
Chair: Helen McVeigh Vice-Chair: Joan Wright Secretary: Patrick J. Ryan Treasurer: Alexander Thein
Members by Election: 1. Cosetta Cadau 2. Adam Conry 3. Bridget Martin 4. Amber Taylor
Further nominations may be made by any Branch and should be sent to me, by post or e-mail, up to two weeks before the AGM. Every such nomination shall state the names of the persons nominated, and shall be signed by their proposers and seconders and certified by the Branch Chairperson or Acting Chairperson. Virtual signatures will be accepted in the current circumstances. Article 14 – Special Motions Any member wishing to propose a Motion (including a proposal for amendment of the Constitution) at the Annual General Meeting should send a signed copy to me up to two weeks before the meeting. Please note that Motions may be submitted by individual members, rather than by Branches. Virtual signatures will be accepted in the current circumstances. Patrick J. Ryan, Secretary
in Northern Ireland CANI has continued with a scaled-down online programme in 2021. It has not been possible to hold our annual schools’ conference or film screening for obvious reasons, but we have welcomed the opportunity to open up our talks to a worldwide audience. In January, TCD alumna Dr Isabelle Torrance spoke about the project of which she is director, Classical Influences and Irish Culture, based at the Centre for Irish Studies in Aarhus University, Denmark. This project aims to show how classical models expose the shifting political structures of the nation through the politics of language, of conflict, of (post)colonialism, of gender, and of identity. The Belfast Summer School Winter Refresher went ahead as planned in January, by Zoom, with classes in Latin and Greek at beginners, lower and upper intermediate, and advanced levels. 28 Greek and 19 Latin students attended from the UK, Ireland, USA, China and Australia. Yes, you read right, Australia! Lesley Jakobson was attending from Adelaide, at 8.30pm in the evening. Lucky for us, she is a night owl and managed to stay awake until 2am. She wrote a blog post about it and you can read this here: http://www. thevarnishedculture.com/learning-ancient-greek-in-belfastand-adelaide/
Dr John Curran, CANI Treasurer and Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at QUB, presented his research on ‘Freud, the Greeks, and the Invention of Personality’. This lecture had been postponed since April 2020, and is available to watch on the CANI YouTube channel. In the concluding event of the academic year, Dr Katerina Kolotourou delivered a lecture on ‘The Oracle at Dodona: Soundscape and Religious Experience’. Katerina is currently working on the excavation of the east house in Mycenae but for this talk, she explored the structures on the site of Dodona and what evidence exists regarding consultation of the oracle. This talk will be available shortly on YouTube. Helen McVeigh
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CAI Branch & University News DUBLIN The Dublin Branch held a full programme of online events for the spring, with five sessions of the Latin Reading Group led by Gearóid Ó Broin, Andrew Smith, Joan Wright, Catherine Ware, and Alexander Thein, and three sessions of the Greek Reading Circle led by Guy Walker, Andrew Smith, and Kerry Phelan, all organised by Liam Bairéad. In addition, there have been two online lectures for the Dublin Branch: the first, on democracy, populism, and the influence of Classical Athenian models on proposals for voting reform in the 21st century by Dr Roslyn Fuller from the Solonian Democracy Institute on 23 March; the second, on the retirement of the emperor Diocletian, compared with recent abdication events, such as Beatrix of the Netherlands and Pope Benedict XVI, by Dr Rebecca Usherwood from Trinity College Dublin on 27 April. The programme also included a lecture on Classical traditions in medieval handbooks on female healthcare by Dr Elaine Pereira Farrell from the UCD Humanities Institute; it was scheduled for 18 May, but has now been postponed to the next academic year. All online events are advertised on Twitter, with Branch lectures also promoted on Facebook and Eventbrite. The result has been a strong increase in the visibility of Branch events, and for the April lecture by Dr Usherwood we were delighted to have a record audience of 65 attendees, with members from Dublin and other Branches joined by members of CANI and the Classical Association, and by others from as far afield as Croatia, Lithuania, and the United States. The Dublin Branch is also pleased to report on a new initiative: the Greek Reading Course on Plato’s Protagoras, a series of five weekly online classes to read an intermediate-level Greek text led by Professor Andrew Smith in May. It is envisioned that this will continue in the autumn with a new text. The Dublin Branch also looks forward to hosting the next ‘Summer School’ in August 2022. Alexander Thein
LIMERICK Normally, we would have opened the Autumn Term of 2020 with our AGM. However, we had to abandon plans, being
hampered by the circumstances of the pandemic. In this context, the presentation of a programme of lectures was deferred, even though the programme itself had been devised. Eventually, a decision was taken to launch forth and, via Zoom, to get things under way. First of all, our sincere thanks to Dr Alex Thein for setting up the Zoom facility for us. Without this we were going nowhere. On 4 November, David Kelly O.S.A. of the Limerick Branch set us off with ‘Augustine: a Journey in Faith and Life’. He was followed by Emmet Jackson, himself a Limerick man and PhD student of Egyptology in the University of Exeter. Emmet spoke on ‘Lady Kavanagh on the Nile, traveller, painter and antiquarian’. Professor Andrew Smith’s very interesting and thoughtful lecture, ‘Re-reading Virgil’s Aeneid’ had to be delayed until January. Our own Patrick Ryan’s excellent talk, ‘The Father of Classical Archaeology: Ciriaco Pizzicolli’, was not given until February. In March, we had the pleasure of listening to Dr Edward Moxon-Browne of UL speaking on ‘Some Influences of Plato’s Republic on education in the 20th Century’. I should say this last lecture was most interesting in that it featured the life-story of Dr Kurt Hahn, founder of Gordonstoun School in Scotland, the Prince of Wales’ alma mater. Our final lecture was given by Ms Clodagh Lynch, again one of our own members. Clodagh surprised us all with her well-researched ‘A Roman dancing Lar, beloved household god, from Navan, Co. Meath’. Normally, over the summer vacation, our members would descend on Patrick Ryan’s idyllic home in Co. Tipperary, where he is wont to host a play-reading, or some such pleasurable activity. At present, we can only hope that the current pandemic restrictions will be further relaxed to allow this to happen. It must also be noted that, on behalf of our members, I conveyed a message of our deepest sympathy to Professor George Huxley on the passing of his wife, Davina, just before Christmas. Prof. Huxley remains a close friend of our Branch and we are privileged to be able to keep in contact with him. Looking ahead, we have several offers of lectures for the Autumn term. However, it remains to be seen how things will turn out at that stage. Tom Seaver, Hon. Secretary
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JUNE 2021
MAYNOOTH UNIVERSITY As lectures and tutorials finish and students are working hard for their examinations, we come to the end of a most unusual academic year. Virtual, Teams, Zoom, and their adjusted meanings are now in our everyday lexicon. In Maynooth University we have engaged with the technology and are full of admiration for our students who have helped make it all work, although technology will never replace meetings in person, quick cups of coffee, chats with colleagues, and leisurely, real trips to the Library. However, this new dispensation has meant that our Maynooth Classical Seminar, organised by my colleague Dr Jonathon Davies, was a great success. This semester our very own Niamh Hopkins, studying for her PhD under the direction of Dr William Desmond, managed to be both entertaining and erudite on ‘Getting our Heads around Kephalos: Introducing Debt in Plato’s Republic’. Kudos to you, Niamh! Dr Dylan James (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) presently in New Zealand emerged from his bed at the unearthly hour of 4.00am to accommodate our timetable to deliver his lecture ‘Indigenous Guides: Comparing Alexander and Columbus’, showing us the ways comparative history can illuminate treatment of guides variously employed or press-ganged by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC and by Christopher Columbus in the fifteenth century AD. Professor Nicholas Purcell (Brasenose College, Oxford) ended this series of seminars with ‘Capitoline Contradictions, from Constantine to Tarquinius Priscus’, his very title tackling head-on this topic which he informed us he is preparing for a new book, The Kingdom of the Capitol. It was a delight to end the seminar series with this paper which made explicit the many contradictions implicit in selffashioning and presentation in Roman tradition and culture. All our seminars attracted good online audiences. We send you all our good wishes and hopes for better times ahead. Maeve O’Brien
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN The UCD School of Classics is pleased to report on the continuing success of the Access Classics initiative led by Ms Tasneem Filaih, Dr Christopher Farrell, and Dr Bridget Martin. In January it launched its own website (https:// accessclassics.ie/) with a webinar event at which Mr Danny
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Delany, Classics teacher at St Fintan’s High School, Sutton, and Dr Louise Maguire, Head of Latin at Blackrock College, described what Access Classics has brought to their schools and students, in particular from object handling sessions in visits to schools or tours of the UCD Classical Museum. There was also praise for the online sessions held during Covid-restrictions and for the sense of community which the programme brings to teachers and students alike. In March, Access Classics took part in the Creative Arts Spring School hosted by the National College of Art and Design, a programme of workshops, campus tours, and information talks on course options and student supports across six colleges and universities in Dublin. The initiative is aimed in particular at applicants from underrepresented groups, and Dr Bridget Martin took participants on a tour of connections between the ancient and modern world. Access Classics also sponsored a virtual night at the UCD Museum as part of the Dublin Learning City Virtual Festival in March, during which Dr Christopher Farrell took the audience through a ‘reading’ of a coin depicting Alexander the Great and Athena. As part of the UCD teaching programme Dr Martin Brady, Dr Bridget Martin and Dr Christopher Farrell delivered the first offering of a module teaching outreach skills to BA Humanities students in support of the Access Classics programme, aided by a grant from the National Foundation for Teaching and Learning. One of the many projects these students took on was to run a twitter account @accessclassics which they used to share engaging and exciting material and learn the best ways to reach out to a wider public on all matters Classical. If you are on Twitter, please take the time to find their account and support their work with likes and retweets. Please also take a moment to listen to the new Access Classics podcast series. The first of the series is on the ancient Greek gods (https://accessclassics.ie/ podcast/). A huge thank you to our recent MA graduates Eleanor Kellett and Maria Wood for their amazing work on the podcasts, and to Tasneem Filaih for producing and editing the series. Finally, we are delighted to announce that the Access Classics team won a UCD Values in Action (VIA) award in December 2020. These awards recognise individuals and teams in UCD who bring to life the University’s values of collegiality, creativity, diversity, engagement, excellence, and integrity. In addition, the Access Classics team was also a finalist for an Outreach award at this year’s Education Awards held in May 2021. To learn more about Access Classics, you can visit us at https://accessclassics.ie/ or follow the School on Twitter @ClassicsUCD. Alexander Thein
CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN Trinity’s Classics department survived another year of online teaching and welcomed the rollout of its new curriculum to second-year Joint Honours, Single Honour, and Common Entry students. This curriculum has significantly increased student choice, which has brought practical challenges but also many academic benefits and opportunities, with Classics welcoming students from courses such as Law, Business, and Deaf Studies in its electives and open modules. The Wednesday evening Classics Research Seminars have been going from strength since moving online, not rarely welcoming over a hundred attendees, while there was also much attention (and appreciation) for the student-organised colloquium 'What have the Ancients ever done for us?' on 17 April 2021, which explored the value of studying the ancient world both in and out of the academy. Last but not least Trinity Classics welcomed a new colleague in Giorgos Papantoniou, who joined us from the university of Cyprus as Assistant Professor in Ancient Visual and Material Culture. Martine Cuypers
Careers with Classics Day
The first Careers with Classics Day will take place online, on 8 September, at Maynooth University (via MS Teams). Professionals from diverse fields will speak to current and prospective Classics students about how their background in Classics helped or led them to their current professional role. The idea is to reflect on the skills that a degree in Classics/Greek and Roman Civilisation provides, and how these can be used in a range of different employment areas. The event will be open to: • all undergarduate and postgraduate students in Ireland; and • pupils and teachers of secondary level institutions in Irish schools. For more information, contact Dr Cosetta Cadau: cosetta.cadau@mu.ie
IIHSA Day School
After cancellation in 2020, the traditional Day School of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens returned in April 2021. Hosted by Barry Molloy’s team at UCD and running online over two days, the day school explored the theme of 'Seascapes' in six papers focussing on island and coastal life in the Aegean and beyond, with topics ranging from the archaeology of Kea to Greek periploi or ‘circumnavigations'.
Leaving Certificate Classical Studies, Latin, & Ancient Greek You may remember that in the spring of 2020, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment approved a 'Background Paper and Brief for the Review of Leaving Certificate Classical Languages', with a view to starting the last phase of a full overhaul of the school curriculum in the classical subjects. This process began with the development of the new junior certificate subject Classics, launched in 2019 and embraced by many new schools. The next stage will be the introduction of an exciting new leaving certificate course in Classical Studies in September 2021. Work on leaving certificate Latin and Ancient Greek was delayed by the pandemic but started in November 2020. Now, eight virtual meetings and a public consultation later, the development group has agreed the parameters of fundamentally reconceived course specifications, which should make Latin and Ancient Greek accessible to more students. If all goes well, the new courses will be presented for consultation in the autumn of 2021, and introduced in September 2022. Martine Cuypers NCCA Classical Languages development group
ClassicsNow – save the date!
We are delighted to announce that ClassicsNow, the cultural festival for Dublin and beyond launched in November 2020, will be back on 20-22 January 2022 with a new programme of events inspired by the literature, drama, and art of the ancient Greeks and Romans as interpreted and reimagined by artists today. After a first festival that ran fully online, we are excited about the prospect of hosting live and hybrid events in January 2022, including performances in public spaces such as musea and libraries, with a number of activities aimed at second and third level students. In the meantime, you can still enjoy some of the content of the first ClassicsNow festival at https://www.classicsnow.ie/, and view the winning submissions of the ClassicsNow Schools Contest at https://www.classicsteachers.com/classicsnow---artsfestival.html. ClassicsNow steering committee
www.classicalassociation.ie
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