May 2017
MAYNOOTH UNIVERSITY Our Maynooth Classics seminars got off to a dreamy start, on Friday, 17 February 2017 at 16:00, when Dr Nick Lowe (Royal Holloway, University of London), softly spoke on ‘Tragedy and the Narratology of Dreaming.’ We were delighted to welcome back Dr Catherine Ware, previously ‘of this house’, who now lectures in University College Cork, with her super lecture ‘The Ashplant and the Golden Bough: Seamus Heaney in Vergil’s Labyrinth’ on Friday, 3 March. On Friday, 24 March, yet another ‘one who got away’ from us here in Maynooth, Professor Mark Humphries (Swansea University), delivered a tour de force performance with his lecture ‘Partes Imperii: East and West in the fall of the Roman Empire’. The book Peace and Reconciliation in the Classical World (Routledge, 2017) was launched immediately after Mark’s lecture and brought a very successful series of seminars to a peaceful close for another academic year. The volume is edited by Dr Michael Williams, lecturer in the Department of Ancient Classics at Maynooth, and Dr Eoghan Moloney, formerly of this department - mirabile dictu, I see a theme developing! Eoghan is now Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at the University of Winchester (UK). Contributors include Dr William Desmond, also of the Maynooth University Department of Ancient Classics. The photograph below shows a very happy duo of editors with two of the jolly learned contributors, Dr Selga Medenieks (TCD) and Dr William Desmond. The common aim of all, editors and contributors, is to redirect attention away from the traditional focus on warfare in the ancient world and towards pioneering efforts to imagine, establish and institute peace. Congratulations to all on this wonderful publication! Dr Maeve O’Brien
CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION IN NORTHERN IRELAND After the immense success which was #IliadLiveBelfast, CANI closed out 2016 with a talk by Professor Theresa Urbainczyk of UCD on 15 December, where she investigated the depiction of ‘Some Byzantine Women and their Husbands’ in the History of Nicetas Choniates and what that depiction was meant to say about the moral, societal and even political decay of the ‘Byzantine’ Roman Empire on the eve of the Fourth Crusade. On 23 February, CANI launched into two days devoted to its CANI4Schools initiative, starting off with a series of talks to the Classical Civilisation Upper and Lower Sixth classes of Dalriada School, Ballymoney (below).
After a brief introduction from Mr Stewart Bredin, Head of History at Dalriada, Dr Peter Crawford, returning to his old grammar school where he was first bitten by the Ancient History bug, went through the overall story of the Persian Wars, before Dr John Curran (above) explained how Augustus attempted to ‘make Rome great again’ through various reform, building and propagandist means. After Drs Crawford and Curran combined to go through the chronological fall of the Roman Republic through the eyes of Cicero, a brief Q&A session saw pupils ask about the benefits of a History degree and subjects of interest within Ancient History. The following day, 24 February, Drs Curran and Crawford then headed to Derry/Londonderry on the invitation of Lumen Christi College’s Latin Club (pictured on the next page). Again working in tandem, they presented a talk on ‘20+ Things Every Latin Student Should Know About Ancient Rome’, covering origin myths, neighbouring peoples, religion, the army, conquest, Roman enemies, the Roman family, trade, literature, slavery, and the modern day influences of Latin on science, law, politics and pop culture. 11