CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
May 2018 New Year’s good wishes were sent to the Branch by Prof. George Huxley, whose presence was missed from this year’s programme, but who will, Deo volente, be with us again next year. The annual Branch dinner was held on May 17, in the Unicorn Restaurant, Dooradoyle. As usual, it was expertly organised by Patrick Ryan and proved a most enjoyable occasion for members. At the moment, the same Patrick is busy planning a summer production of Terence’s Self-Tormentor, to be given by the Orchard Yard Players in his premises in Newport, Co. Tipperary. All is set for the afternoon of Saturday, June 9, and all are welcome! Tom Seaver, Branch Secretary
CAI DUBLIN A very good way to enter into the minds of the Ancients is through hearing them speak for themselves, through their writings, in their own tongue. For these reasons CAI (Dublin) has encouraged and promoted the Latin Reading Group over many years. This academic year of 2017-18 has so far seen seven sessions, led by academics and non-academics. Prof. Emer. Andrew Smith, Dr Alexandra Eckert, Joan Wright, Geraldine FitzGerald, Gearóid Ó Broin, Alan Tuffery and myself, Liam Bairéad, chose texts for our group sessions from Horace, Valerius Maximus, Statius, Ovid, Terence, Tibullus and Vergil. Dr Cosetta Cadau leads the final session of the year on 30 May with an excerpt from the late-Roman poet Claudian. As Convenor of the Group, I wish on its behalf to thank all the session leaders of this academic year. I must also thank the School of Classics in UCD, which graciously provides a room for all our meetings. A new and very welcome development took place just before Christmas 2017, also under the auspices and with the full encouragement of CAI (Dublin): an Ancient Greek Reading Circle was set up. As Convenor of the Circle I must convey our thanks to the Department of Classics in TCD for providing a room for all our sessions. A very special thanks must be paid to Dr Martine Cuypers of the Department for her vital support to and continuing encouragement for the project. Again, I must thank the session leaders beginning with Gerry Murtagh, who
steered the very first session with some of Theocritus’s finest poetry. After Christmas four more sessions were held, led by Paddy Sammon (Plutarch), Prof. Emer. Andrew Smith (Sophocles), Dr Martine Cuypers (Homer), and Seán McCrum with an excerpt from a Byzantine-era Acritic Song (author unknown). Following the modus operandi of the Latin Reading Group, each Ancient Greek Reading Circle session is led by someone with a particular knowledge and interest in a given text. The leaders moderate and guide the sessions where participants read and translate the given text, ask questions and join in debate. The intention for 2018-19 is to provide seven or eight sessions for both of the groups, Latin and Ancient Greek. No one need be shy of coming along to participate: all are welcome even if their Latin or Greek is rusty, as no-one is obliged to attempt translating. Attendees can simply listen to the reading and translating of the text and join in the discussions and arguments! We are looking forward to rich, stimulating fare of language for soul and mind this Autumn. Be with us! Liam Bairéad
MAYNOOTH UNIVERSITY Greetings from Maynooth University as another academic year draws to a busy close. This semester, our Maynooth Classics Seminar series covered topics from the place of the supreme Roman poet Catullus in a complex of friendships political, philosophic and poetic in ‘“Out of the Forum”: Love, Friendship, and Philosophy in Catullus and his Contemporaries’ (2 February 2018), by Prof. Monica Gale (Trinity College Dublin), to two talks for the price of one at our final seminar of the year on 27 April 2018: ‘Some Problems with the Epicurean Soul’ by MU PhD postgraduate Stephen McCarthy, who gloried in the gory problem of whether a dismembered limb has a soul, and also ‘SelfFashioning in Augustine’s Retractationes’ by his colleague in MU postgraduate studies Colm Guerin, who demonstrated how St Augustine fashioned his writings into a unified corpus for posterity. We were delighted to welcome Dr Shelley Hales (University of Bristol) on 16 February 2018 and her erudite and entertaining ‘Novel Interiors: Resurrecting Pompeii in 11