Latin Forum Schedule

2025 Latin Forum

February 22, 2025

*Each registrant can pick up their personalized schedule at check-in.

Keynote lecture

The Female Body and the Roman Body Politic in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita

Ellen Millender, Omar and Althea Hoskins Professor of Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Humanities

Throughout Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita we meet numerous Roman females – among them mothers, daughters, wives, queens, schemers, and even warriors of a sort. These figures play key roles in Livy’s edifying tales of early Rome, often as either the creators and maintainers of political community or as the instruments of chaos and political change. Through their bodies and their sexuality, many females in Livy’s history both create the Roman body politic and threaten to pull it apart. This lecture will analyze several episodes from the Ab Urbe Condita, many of which involve scenes of rape and sexual violence. This analysis, in turn, will elucidate the ideology and anxieties behind many of the females featured not only in Livy’s historical work but also in numerous other works composed in Rome in the late first century BCE. (Content warning: sexual violence)

Seminars

A. Reading the Stars … in Latin!

Michael Faletra, Professor of English and Humanities

Open a newspaper today, and you’ll find a horoscope heavily populated by Latin words: Aries (“the Ram”), Taurus (“the Bull”), Sagittarius (“the Archer”), etc. In this seminar, we will survey the ways in which peoples of the Roman Empire and of early medieval Europe thought about the heavens above and the earth below. Through discussion and hands-on activities we will investigate the nature of Roman thinking about astronomy and astrology (and other modes of premodern fortune-telling), and will think about how Latin speakers of the ancient world and beyond made sense of the universe—both the macrocosm and the microcosm—and of their place within it.

B. Imperial Images: Portraits of the Emperor and Roman Propaganda

Tom Landvatter, Associate Professor of Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Humanities

The Roman Empire was vast, extending from northern England to southern Egypt, from and from modern Morocco to the Euphrates river. Hardly anyone ever actually saw the Roman Emperor, so how did anyone actually know who was ruling over them? How did the emperor communicate with such a large, culturally and geographically diverse population? The answer is through the cultivation of a specific imperial image. In this seminar we examine how emperors from Augustus through Constantine cultivated a specific "look" for themselves in sculpture, on coins, and via other media; how images of the emperor changed over time to communicate specific ideological concepts about Roman imperial power and legitimacy; and how the emperors sometimes adapted their own image to suit specific, local needs.

C. The Lettering of the Trajan Inscription

Gregory MacNaughton '89, Education Outreach and Calligraphy Initiative Coordinator of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery

Among the most celebrated examples of Roman lettering is the inscription at the base of Trajan's column which has served as a model for calligraphers and type designers for two millennia. In this hands-on workshop we will closely examine the inscription, analyze the structure and formation of the letters, and practice writing them. Along the way we will discuss the role Reed College alumni played in the development of hte Trajan typeface, and look at some current examples of its use advertising everything from Hollywood films to dog food.

D. Many Romes: The Romes of Martial, Ovid, Pliny, Horace and Augustus

Nigel Nicholson, Walter Mintz Professor of Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Humanities