25 January 2013: Workshop

‘Writing in Rome (and beyond) from Nerva to Hadrian’

St Andrews, 25 January 2013

Organised by Alice König and hosted by the School of Classics at the University of St Andrews, with funding from the School of Classics.

This workshop brought together a range of scholars to exchange ideas about the project’s scope and agenda and to identify particularly important lines of inquiry. Participants were encouraged to consider some preliminary themes, including: trends in literary production in the period; ideas about and images of contemporary literary life; overlaps between literary and other intellectual and cultural activities; boundaries and interactions between ‘literary’ and ‘non-literary’ writing; interaction between Roman and non-Roman writers; the impact of social and political developments on literary output and literary life; and contrasts and continuity between Flavian, Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic literary activity.

Programme of speakers:

  • Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus as Flavian Epic Successor?’
  • Roger Rees: ‘Buildings and Morals in some Trajanic-Hadrianic prose’
  • Jon Coulston: ‘The Roman metropolis: centre of empire, centre of learning’
  • Myles Lavan: ‘The emperor speaks’
  • Jason König: ‘Reading Plutarch with Pliny the Younger’
  • Nicolas Wiater: ‘Explaining Rome under the emperors: Appian and the tradition of Greek approaches to Roman rule’

A digest of discussions can be found here: From Valerius Flaccus to Apollodorus of Damascus.