Seen on the Classicists list:

Irony and Humour as Imperial Greek Literary Strategies:

The Playful Plutarch
12-13 July 2011
Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles’, University of Oxford.

PROGRAMME

Tuesday, 12th July 2011

9:00-9:30: Registration

9:30-10:00: Opening words/ welcome:
Christopher Pelling (University of Oxford)
Eran Almagor (Hebrew University of Jerusalem/ University of Leipzig)
Katerina Oikonomopoulou (University of Patras)

10:00-10:45 Session 1: A Playful Plutarch?

Introduction: Frances Titchener (Utah State University)
Luc van der Stockt (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven): ‘Verbal Wit and Practical Jokes. Conditions for and Limits to Humour according to Plutarch.’

10:45- 11:15: Coffee break

11:15 – 12:45 Session 2: Reading Humour

11:15 – 11:45: Eran Almagor (Hebrew University of Jerusalem/ University of Leipzig): ‘The Importance of Being Ironic: Irony and the Unreliable Narrator in Plutarch’s Lives.’
11:45 – 12:15: Mark Beck (University of South Carolina): ‘The Serio-Comical Life of Antony: A Bakhtinian Reading.’
12:15 – 12:45: Alexei Zadorozhny (University of Liverpool): ‘Funny Stuff: Sympotic Teasing and Ethopoetic Strategies in the Banquet of the Seven Sages.’

12:45 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 Session 3: Plays with Eros

14:00 – 14:30: Aristoula Georgiadou (University of Patras): ‘Plutarch, a Serious Jester? The Case of the Amatorius.’
14:30 – 15:00: Toni Badnall (University of Oxford): ‘Do as I do, not as I say? Tongue-in-cheek Humour in Plutarch’s Amatorius.’
15:00 – 15:30: Aislinn Melchior (University of Puget Sound): ‘’Whose Dog are you?˝ Moral Metabiography and Named Slaves in Plutarch’s Roman Lives’

15:30 – 16:00: Coffee break

16:00–17:30 Session 4: Plutarchan Humoristic Discourse in its Imperial Context

16:00-16:30: Judith Mossman (University of Nottingham): ‘The Humour in Homer: Plutarch’s Gryllus and the Odyssey.’
16:30-17:00: Jason König (University of St. Andrews), ‘Sympotic Smiles and Sympotic Laughter in Plutarch and Macrobius.’
17:00-17:30: Katerina Oikonomopoulou (University of Patras): ‘Imperial Discourses of Laughter in Plutarch and Other Second Sophistic Authors.’

17:30 – 18:00 Tea break

18:00 – 18:45 Session 5: Playing with Plutarch

Christopher Pelling (University of Oxford): ‘Plutarchan Humour: The Story so Far.’
Donald Russell (University of Oxford): ‘A Plutarchan Fragment.’

18:45-20:00 Drinks reception

20:00 Conference dinner

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

9:00–10:30 Session 6: Laughter Between Philosophy and Psychology

9:00- 9:30: Anastasios Nikolaidis (University of Crete): ‘Philosophers do not laugh: Plutarch’s Sense of Humour as Evidence of his Platonism.’
9:30- 10:00: Maria Vamvouri Ruffy (University of Lausanne): ‘Plutarque et le Contrôle du Rire.’
10:00 – 10:30: Katarzyna Jazdzewska (Ohio State University): ‘Communicating through Laughter: Plutarch’s Symposion of the Seven Sages.’

10:30 – 11:00: Coffee break

11:00- 12:30 Session 7: Plutarchan Learned Plays

11:00-11:30 Michael Paschalis (University of Crete): ‘Etymology and Word-play in Plutarch.’
11:30- 12:00: Hendrik Müller-Reineke (University of Göttingen/Corpus Christi College Oxford): ‘Plutarch’s Collection of Apophtegmata as a Source of Educated Wit and Humour.’
12:00-12:30: Jared Hudson (UC Berkeley): ‘Ridentem dicere verum: Humour in Plutarch’s Etymologies.’

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:00 Session 8: Wit, Humour and the Plutarchan Statesman

13:30 – 14:00: Delfim Leão (University of Coimbra): ‘The Playful Solon and the Sneaky Athenians: Plutarch on the Salamis Dossier and on the Seisachtheia.’
14:00- 14:30: Mallory Monaco (Princeton University): ‘Folly and Dark Humour in the Life of Demetrius.’
14:30-15:00 Susan Jacobs (Columbia University): ‘Humour in Plutarch’s Lives: A Tool of the Statesman’s Craft.’

15:00- 15:30 Coffee Break

15:30- 17:00: Session 9: Irony and the Comic between Text and Intertext
15:30-16:00: Sophia Xenophontos (University of Oxford): ‘Plutarch’s Use of Comedy in the Lives of Pericles and Fabius Maximus.’
16:00-16:30: Michele Lucchesi (University of Oxford): ‘Laughter in Plutarch’s Sulla.’
16:30-17:00: Johan Vekselius (University of Lund): ‘Humour and Ironic Tears in Plutarch’s Lives.’

17:10 – 17:40 Session 10: The Playful Plutarch

Closing discussion, chaired by Christopher Pelling
Closing Words by Eran Almagor and Katerina Oikonomopoulou

For more information, please contact the conference organizers:
Dr Eran Almagor (eranalmagor AT gmail.com)
Dr Katerina Oikonomopoulou (aikaterini.oikonomopoulou AT linacre.oxon.org)

An interesting inscription from San Magno mentioned in Il Faro … it includes this photo (not sure how long this will be available):

The gist of what follows is that the inscription was found during the renovations of a church and is a dedication of a certain Gaius Pantuleius Epigonus, freedman of Gaiud Pantuleius, and one of the Augustales. Although a date doesn’t seem to be given (I might have missed it), there is ‘excitement’ because this lends support to the local origins of the Pantuleii, who would become prominent under Marcus Aurelius.

Il Sindaco di Fondi Salvatore De Meo, l’Assessore alla Cultura Lucio Biasillo ed il funzionario della Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Lazio Nicoletta Cassieri rendono noto che una nuova importante iscrizione è andata ad aggiungersi al patrimonio epigrafico di Fondi, fornendo elementi di notevole interesse per la conoscenza storica e archeologica della città romana, soprattutto sotto l’aspetto dell’ordinamento sociale e istituzionale.

La scoperta è avvenuta nei giorni scorsi nella zona di San Magno durante le operazioni preliminari al consolidamento dei resti del piccolo edificio di culto cristiano di epoca altomedievale recentemente portato in luce presso il Casale Mosillo. Tale intervento conservativo è promosso dall’Assessorato all’Ambiente della Regione Lazio in stretta collaborazione con la Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Lazio, rispettivamente sotto la direzione di Claudio Spagnardi e il coordinamento scientifico del funzionario di zona Nicoletta Cassieri.

“L’iscrizione – come evidenzia la stessa dottoressa Cassieri – tracciata in lettere molto curate su una piccola lastra di marmo circondata da una cornice (cm. 40×56 circa) venne riutilizzata nel pavimento del presbiterio della chiesetta, a poche centinaia di metri dal Monastero. Essa conserva una dedica a Caio Pantuleio Epigono, liberto di un Caio Pantuleio non meglio specificato, ricordato in qualità di “Augustale” ossia di membro del collegio addetto al culto dell’imperatore”.

Lo studio è stato appena avviato ma già ad una prima lettura si possono fare alcune osservazioni.
“Innanzitutto – prosegue Cassieri – si tratta di un documento che conferma con certezza a Fondi l’esistenza degli Augustali, potente collegio generalmente composto da ricchi liberti cui erano riservate prerogative che li accostavano per molti versi ai magistrati locali. Inoltre, la rarità del gentilizio Pantuleio fuori della nostra città fa propendere per un’origine locale di questa gens che, tra i discendenti di uno dei suoi rami, arriverà ad annoverare nel 172 d.C., durante il regno di Marco Aurelio, addirittura un senatore che fu governatore della Tracia, l’odierna Bulgaria. ‘Epigonus’ è invece il nome che il personaggio aveva da schiavo”.

Nulla è dato sapere sul contesto cui apparteneva l’epigrafe e dunque se provenga da un edificio ubicato nella contrada o se invece vi sia stata trasportata dal centro urbano in una fase di spoglio dei monumenti romani e di reimpiego dei materiali di pregio come il marmo. Meno incerta invece la sua datazione: non oltre gli inizi del II secolo d.C., e ciò per una serie di indizi significativi soprattutto riguardanti i caratteri delle lettere.

“Il pregevole reperto – dichiarano il Sindaco De Meo e l’Assessore alla Cultura Biasillo – andrà ad arricchire la collezione del Museo archeologico cittadino che proprio in questo periodo è in corso di riallestimento, in vista di una sua prossima apertura sotto la supervisione scientifica della Soprintendenza nella persona della dott.ssa Nicoletta Cassieri”.

• Iscrizione romana affiora dal terreno

… I’m not sure what San Magno would have been called in antiquity.

Not sure if that headline makes any sense at all; I’ve been waiting for someone to bring this up … from CNBC:

If the secret to understanding a nation lies in understanding its founding, those trying to understand Greece might want to look to Solon.

Solon is the founder of Greek democracy—which is to say he is the founder of democracy altogether. And one of his most famous acts was the repudiation of debt.

When Solon came onto the Greek scene in 6th century BC, Athens was in disarray. Plutarch tells us that strife had engulfed the city, bringing it to the brink of anarchy. The source of this strife was that “all the common people were weighed down with debts they owed to a few rich men,” according to Plutarch.

Making matters worse, debtors who were unable to make payments when they were due were seized and sold into slavery.

A fragment of Solon’s poetry describes a situation in which many of the poor “have arrived in foreign lands/sold into slavery, bound in shameful fetters.”

In 594 BC, Solon was appointed archon of Athens. His solution to his city’s strife was to cancel both public and private debts and end debt slavery.

The freeing of the debt slaves and the cancellation of debt set the stage for the flourishing of the Athenian economy and culture. Freed slaves and unencumbered landowners formed the basis of an agrarian and democratic political culture that gave Greece its military might and helped shape the formation of western civilization.

Listen closely to the protestors in Greece. When they decry austerity plans that “turn workers into slaves,” they are echoing the sentiments of their ancient founder.

• via The Ancient and Noble Greek Tradition of Debt Repudiation – CNBC.

… somewhere along the line, someone needs to say that someone is giving someone else too much credit, then duck for cover …

Tip o’ the pileus (Piraeus?) to Terrence Lockyer for bringing this abstract from Geology to our attention:

The famous Greek geographer Strabo wrote in the first century A.D., that Piraeus was formerly an island and lay ‘over against’ the mainland, from which it got its name. To validate Strabo’s hypothesis, cartographic and historical data were compiled with multiproxy paleoenvironmental analyses and radiocarbon dating from a series of boreholes drilled in the Cephissus coastal plain, southwest of Athens, Greece. The results of this interdisciplinary geoarchaeological research demonstrate the reliability of Strabo’s text by revealing that Piraeus was indeed an island. In early Holocene time, the rocky hill of Piraeus was linked to the mainland of Attica. During the late to final Neolithic Period (4850–3450 B.C.), Piraeus became an island in a shallow marine bay, due to sea-level rise in the Holocene. Between 2850 and 1550 B.C., in the Early and Middle Bronze Age, Piraeus was separated from the mainland by a wide lagoon. In the fifth century B.C., Themistocles, Cimon, and then Pericles connected Athens to Piraeus by building two “long walls” partly built on a residual coastal marsh called the Halipedon. This study reveals an impressive example of past landscape evolution.

• via Piraeus, the ancient island of Athens: Evidence from Holocene sediments and historical archives.

[my problem is that I can’t find where Strabo says Piraeus was an island; I’m sure it’s there somewhere …]

Interesting feature up at the Met’s website … here’s a tease:

 The “Mask of Agamemnon” is one of the most famous gold artifacts from the Greek Bronze Age. Found at Mycenae in 1876 by the distinguished archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, it was one of several gold funeral masks found laid over the faces of the dead buried in the shaft graves of a royal cemetery. The most detailed and stylistically distinct mask came to be known as the Mask of Agamemnon, named after the famous king of ancient Mycenae whose triumphs and tribulations are celebrated in Homer’s epic poems and in the tragic plays of Euripides. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s replica of this mask molded by Emile Gilliéron père (manufactured and sold by the Würtemberg Electroplate Company) is an example of an electroformed reproduction, also commonly known as an electrotype—or by the historic term, “galvanoplastic”—reproduction.

Electrotype technique was developed in the nineteenth century and was used to reproduce many different kinds of historic metalworks. It became an important means of disseminating information about historic cultures throughout the world in a time before readily accessible color images and widespread travel. An electrotype reproduction was thought of as a precise replica, even though the method of manufacture and the materials were not the same as those of the original artwork. In A Brief Account of E. Gilliéron’s Beautiful Copies of Mycenaean Antiquities in Galvano-plastic, the sales catalogue for the replicas, they were described as “exact imitations of the objects in Galvano-Plastic, in which the forms, no less than the brilliancy and colours of the metals, are faithfully reproduced.” Gisela M. A. Richter—the eminent Metropolitan Museum curator who was instrumental in the acquisition of many of these reproductions—wrote that the copies were “of sufficient accuracy to give us a vivid idea of the originals.” (more follows)

• via The Mask of Agamemnon: An Example of Electroformed Reproduction of Artworks Made by E. Gilliéron in the Early Twentieth Century.

… the article goes on to describe the process … definitely worth a read.