Athena's Owl

Archive for October, 2009

Please plan to attend this upcoming lecture by Dr. Megan Perry of ECU’s Anthropology Department and Classical Studies Program.  Regular readers of Athena’s Owl will remember Dr. Perry’s summer research report from Jordan.  Come and hear the results of her work.

East Carolina University Department of Anthropology

presents:

Beyond the Façades:

An Archaeological Perspective of Petra, Jordan

a lecture by:

Megan A. Perry

Associate Professor of Anthropology, East Carolina University

Director of the Petra North Ridge Project

November 11, Wednesday

7PM

Flanagan 265

We were saddened to learn yesterday of the passing of Roger Hornsby, Professor emeritus of Classics at the University of Iowa.  Prof. Hornsby was a very good friend of the ECU Classics Program.  He was the first classicist to hold the Whichard Chair, our College’s annual distinguished visiting professorship, in 1997-98.  During that year, he gave the well remembered lecture “The Liberal Arts, The Humanities and Other Good Things.”  He visited Greenville numerous times in the succeeding years.  His presence was always a welcome respite from the routine of the academic year.  He had a deep, loving and infectious understanding of ancient literature.  He possessed the sharpest wit I have ever known, outpaced only by the sharpness of his sagacious mind.

Prof. Hornsby spent his career at the University of Iowa.  His early books on Latin literature and especially his book on similes in Vergil’s Aeneid are models of Classical scholarship.  Yet he will not be remembered primarily for his scholarship.  He was never the most prolific publisher.  Rather, his life demonstrated that the scholar’s influence need not be between the woven covers of a tome.  He leaves behind a veritable legion of students whose lives he touched deeply.  I myself was never fortunate enough to study with him.  I have, however, met several who did, and have repeatedly found that they will regale you with improbable Hornsby tales and, more importantly, will express without provocation how Roger shaped their lives in the classroom and beyond it.

nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

Here is some information about an exciting summer program at my undergraduate alma mater.  I thought some of you might be interested.

Summer Latin Workshop 2010
July 11 to 16, 2010, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania

We will read selections from De orbe novo by the Italian humanist Peter Martyr of Angleria (1457-1526), the most important early account of Columbus’ voyages to the new world. This work was originally written in Latin, and was complete by 1501. Martyr did not travel to the new world himself, but did interview Columbus and his shipmates, as well as other players in the events. His Latin is not difficult, and the spare and straightforward style of this work could best be compared among classical works to Caesar’s commentaries.

Given the topic this year, a special invitation is extended to teachers and scholars interested in early contacts between Europe and the Americas who would like to read De Orbe Novo in the original.

INSTRUCTORS: Prof. Christopher Francese and Prof. Meghan Reedy, both of the Dickinson College Department of Classical Studies

TO APPLY: please contact Mrs. Barbara McDonald, mcdonalb@dickinson.edu by the application deadline May 1, 2010.

FEE: The fee for 2010 is $300, due in a check made out to Dickinson College, by the fee deadline June 1, 2010. Please send it to Mrs.
Barbara McDonald, Department of Classical Studies, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA 17013. (The full cost is about twice that, but the workshop is subsidized by the Roberts Fund for Classical Studies.)

MORE INFORMATION: http://latincamp.wetpaint.com/

The Spring 2010 Classical Studies course schedule is now available online.  It features a new course by Prof. Stevens entitled “The Power of Images in Ancient Greece and Rome,” in which students will study significant monuments and art works of the classical world side by side with Greek and Roman literature.  Other courses include Prof. Romer’s Greek and Roman Religions, Prof. Papalas’s Greek History, Prof. Teske’s Greek Tragedy, and my own Classical Mythology.  And, as I mentioned in my last post, Prof. Peter Green will be returning to ECU and will offer a course on Herodotus and the Persian Wars.  Prof. Green has recently finished a new translation of Herodotus’s Histories.  Many of the historical and historiographical issues he faced in his translation project will be fodder for the class.  If you saw the movie 300 and want to know more about Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, this is the course for you.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the day when classes were first offered at East Carolina University, then known as East Carolina Teachers Training School.  Among those first classes was instruction in Latin, offered by Ms. Birdie McKinnie.  Below, I copy Chancellor Steve Ballard’s announcement of this occasion, along with a photograph of the first ECTTS faculty.

Great news!  Dr. Peter Green will be returning to ECU for the spring semester.  He will most likely be teaching a course on Herodotus and the Persian Wars on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Watch this space for more news.

Meanwhile, I note that Athena’s Owl has had its thousandth visitor.  Thanks to all of our regular readers and to those who drop by occasionally.