Sine Spoliis: The Commemoration of the Third Macedonian War through the Porticus Octavia
presented by Julius Arnold

Friday, January 17th, 2025 at 4:30 P.M.
Eaton Humanities 250

Abstract: The lost Porticus Octavia, constructed after the Third Macedonian War, remains an enigmatic monument of the Middle Roman Republic. Built to commemorate Gnaeus Octavius’ capturing of the last Macedonian king Perseus, the building has received scant attention in surviving ancient literature and modern scholarship. In this talk, I argue that the monument likely served as a display space for spoils of war taken by Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who had defeated Perseus in battle. I shed light on how Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gnaeus Octavius collaborated to control the public memory of their military successes, situating the Porticus Octavia within the broader context of the commemoration of victories over Hellenistic kingdoms and the display of war spoils in the city of Rome.

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Speaker: Jacqueline Fellows

6:00 pm Thursday, March 9
Eaton Humanities, HUMN135
Free and open to the public!

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It is with great sadness that the Department announces the passing of Professor Emerita Joy K. King, an extremely distinguished Classicist, an inspirational teacher, a visionary leader, and a critical contributor to the department and the University. 

Professor King - Joy - received her degrees from Knox College (BA 1947), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (MA 1952), and the University of Colorado Boulder (PhD 1969). She taught at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1968 to 1994, serving as Chair of the Classics Department from 1982 to 1986. She published widely on Roman poetry, focusing especially on Propertius, Catullus, and Lucretius. At CU she coordinated the beginning and intermediate Latin programs and supervised graduate instructors, taught Latin Teaching Methods, and helped prepare Classics majors who were planning to dedicate themselves to secondary Latin teaching. Beyond CU, she was the preeminent voice of Colorado Latin, devoting herself to supporting all Colorado Latin teachers with advice, training, and a frequent newsletter. She served as co-chair of the (1983-1984) and president of the (1991-1992). 

A volume in her honor, , edited by Mary DeForest, was published in 1993 by Bolchazy Carducci Publishers. The title captures a salient feature of her career, for she navigated the academy and the field of Classics in a period when it was largely closed to female faculty, and she did so in a way that commanded respect and authority even while pushing the rules of the game in the direction of civility and warmth. Joy remained an active presence in Classics and at CU deep into her retirement. On her birthday in 2012, the department held a symposium to recognize and pay tribute to her many contributions. The Department established an award to commemorate the work of Joy alongside her longtime friend and fellow department member Barbara Hill. The Joy King-Barbara Hill fellowship in the Teaching of Latin, first awarded in 2015, continues to play a role in fostering the love of Latin among emerging generations at CU that Joy herself kindled and fostered for 26 years. Her many contributions to the field were recognized by the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.

The family would prefer memorial contributions in support of the  in lieu of flowers.

You can watch Professor King talk about her life and career to and  in 2019.

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Jackie Elliott explores early Latin poetry in a new book!

This new publication by Jackie Elliott discusses the earliest Roman poetry we can trace, which dates to the late third and second centuries B.C.E. With the exception of Roman comedy, all poetry written at Rome during this period is today fragmentary and available to us only via quotations or references in later ancient authors. Early Latin Poetry describes the surviving record of third and second-century Roman epic, 'serious' drama, and satire, and addresses the methodological problems of engaging with these remains.

Jackie Elliott (Ph.D. Columbia 2005) studies the history of Roman literature from its inception, specializing in the epic and historiographical traditions of republican Rome. Her first monograph,  (Cambridge, 2013) retraces what we think we know of Rome’s first and massively influential but now fragmentary hexametric epic to its ancient sources. This study was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement (4 June, 2014) and won several awards, including the Society for Classical Studies’ . She is also the author of  (Leiden, 2022), an introduction to the fragmentary record of Roman poetry from its origins through roughly the first hundred and twenty years of its existence. She has received fellowships from the Humboldt Foundation, the American Academy at Rome, the Loeb Foundation, and has contributed articles to the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, the Classical Quarterly, Histos, and the American Journal of Philology. Currently, she is working on a project on Cato’s Origines informed by exploration of the work’s early reception and transmission history; a commentary on the Annales with a literary bias and a focus on the text's ancient reception in later works of literature; and a project on the transmission and early reception of Lucilius.

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 Announcement of the 2020 Mary E. V. McClanahan Graduate Essay Prize

Summary: Classics Graduate students are invited to submit essays to be judged by a committee of three faculty members. The writer of the essay judged to be the best will receive $1,500 and will present his or her essay as a lecture to the department, to be followed by a reception. Even very good seminar papers are likely to have a better chance if they have been revised and improved; hence the fall submission deadline.

Eligibility: Graduate students enrolled in the Department of Classics at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the Fall 2020 semester are eligible to submit essays in the field of Classics, broadly defined. These will usually have been written for seminars and courses here, but essays originally written for other courses or at other institutions are also eligible. Essays should be between four and six thousand words in length, although shorter submissions may be considered. If the essay includes a research apparatus (footnotes, bibliography, image captions), these should not be included in the word count. A student who has won the prize may not compete a second time.

Submission deadline: Electronic versions of the essays (.docx, .doc, or .pdf) should be submitted to Peter Hunt (peter.hunt@colorado.edu) by October 12th.  Please submit an anonymous version of the essay, so the committee may judge the essays blind to the extent possible.   The winner will be announced by October 26th.

Prize: In addition to the cash prize ($1500) the winner normally presents their essay to the department in a public lecture followed by a reception.  We anticipate that the lecture will need to be given via Zoom this year.

Judging: The selection committee consists of three faculty members in the Department of Classics. The committee may decide not to award the prize.  In exceptional circumstances, the committee may decide to acknowledge more than one paper in whatever way they deem appropriate, e.g. designating a paper as an honorable mention, splitting the prize money, or sponsoring two lectures.  The announcement date, due date, and amount of the prize may vary from year to year.

Judges for this year’s competition are Professors Dimitri Nakassis (Committee Chair), Isabel Köster, and Zach Herz.  Send submissions to Peter Hunt.

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We in the Department of Classics join our colleagues in Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies in condemning the murder of George Floyd and other Black Americans. We also endorse the statements of our professional organizations, the  and the , and we affirm our commitment to work with our colleagues and students to confront racism on our campus and in our communities.

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Professor Nick Rauh (Purdue) -  Searching for Pirates: "The Rough Cilicia Archeological Survey Project”

[video:https://youtu.be/TJlsT5tvJGo]

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Please find a full schedule of Summer 2020 Classics classes here.

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