Butser Ancient Schoolroom 2024

This post was written by undergraduate student Jacinta Hunter.

The Ancient Schoolroom’s second summer residency at Butser Ancient Farm was no less magical than the first: swallows wheeled and darted around us as we walked from era to era; four-horned sheep still grazed in the adjoining fields; we cooked Roman meals over an open fire each night; and a recently born kid goat called Nutmeg greeted us each morning with enthusiastic bleating.

However our daily routine was a little different this time. As well as the usual schoolroom activities of reading, writing, and counting board maths, we were able (thanks to a host of Reading staff, students, and Schoolroom associates) to also offer spinning, board games, gem-charm making, curse-writing, and geometry!

Gem carving

But perhaps the biggest difference was the addition of two all-day workshops, which involved staging an entire play, with a cast of 6-12-year-olds, over the course of one afternoon. The plays in question were Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus, which I (with the help of my ever supportive fiancé) adapted into short, child-friendly scripts, and made props and costumes for. Many a late night in the lead-up to Butser found us sewing capes, constructing cardboard weapons, and flicking red paint at an old sheet so Agamemnon could have a suitably (but not too gruesomely) bloodied robe.

This was a new endeavour for both me and the Ancient Schoolroom, so I was rather nervous about how well it would all turn out. But I needn’t have worried at all as, thanks in large part to the amazing support and diligence of the rest of the Schoolroom team, each play was triumph!

There was a real sense of anticipation in the air once our young actors were in costume and the audience of parents and guardians was in place, and the children really rose to the occasion. Highlights from Agamemnon included: a particularly spectacular entrance of the chorus with their walking sticks; a spirited characterisation of frustrated Cassandra; a surprise star-turn from Aegisthus; and a comedic entrance of the ‘dead’ Agamemnon in a wheelbarrow, which raised a hearty laugh from the audience.

Miles Gloriosus, with its complex and farcical plot, proved a little more challenging, but our performers still carried it off with aplomb. Credit for this has to go in large part to our very talented Palaestrio, who somehow knew what was going on after only one rehearsal, and to all the rest of our fabulous actors doing an excellent job at remembering which door they should be going through when!

I felt very proud of the performances, actors, and Schoolroom team, and it was lovely to have these feelings validated by positive feedback from the parents and Butser staff.

The Roman villa and performance area

Jacinta taking a short break

What with all these new activities, all day workshops, and productions, it certainly felt like we were doing rather more work than play, so we were very excited to be invited back to Sally Grainger’s house for another expertly cooked, authentic Roman meal. We were even joined by our very own Professor Emma Aston, which made it all the more special.

Sally Grainger preparing us for a garum tasting

Emma, and Roman fruit

The core Schoolroom team enjoying some downtime

Of course, all good things have to come to an end. I felt sad as we packed the car and bid farewell to each other on our final morning, knowing I was leaving the darting swallows, clear night skies, open fires, and Nutmeg the goat behind. But not too sad, as I know it will be just as magical next year.

Semester 2 2025 Reading Classics Research Seminars and Ure Lecture

We are pleased to announce the launch of our Reading Classics Seminar Series for Semester 2 2025, which will boost our Wednesday afternoons with constructive and stimulating lectures and discussions on various aspects of Classics research!

In this series of lectures, starting on 19 February 2025, we welcome a diverse group of speakers in our Departmental seminars. Our Semester 2 seminar series will explore a variety of topics and periods of Classical studies. Most seminars are hybrid and will be livestreamed on MS Teams. No registration is required. Attendance is free and open to all!

We are also pleased to invite you to attend the 2025 Ure Lecture by Dr. Jane Masséglia (University of Leicester) on “The Trojan War Mosaic at Ketton: How Greek Stories Came to Roman Britain”. Join us on Friday, 28 March 2025 at 5 PM for an exciting talk and reception. Entry is free, but booking is required here.

For more information, contact e.m.m.aston@reading.ac.uk.

Below you can find a poster with all titles and times (UK Time):

Full list of titles

19 February – 16:00-17:30 (Edith Morley G25)

Prof. Lene Rubinstein, Royal Holloway, University of London, Displaced civilians in fourth-century Athens: Social repercussions and political challenges.

20 March (Thursday) – 16:00-17:30 (Palmer 102) [This talk will only be in-person]

Dr Elena Chepel, University of Vienna, Festival mobility in Graeco-Roman Egypt.

28 March – 17:00-18:00 (Henley Business School G15)

Dr Jane Masséglia, University of Leicester, The Trojan War Mosaic at Ketton: how Greek stories came to Roman Britain. [Registration Required Here]

30 April – 16:00-17:30 (Edith Morley G25)

visual artists and researchers Aaron Ford (Institute of Classical Studies) and Hardeep Dhindsa (King’s College London), Race, Empire, and Decoloniality Seminar.

14 May – 16:00-17:30 (Edith Morley G25)

Alessandra Rocchetti, University of Oxford, The spatiality of magic across curse tablets, literary, and para-literary sources.

21 May – 16:00-17:30 (Edith Morley G44)

Dr Davide Massimo, University of Nottingham, “Hellenisation” and cultural identity in the Hellenistic world: insights from verse inscriptions.

 

Semester 1 2024 Reading Classics Research Seminars

We are pleased to announce the launch of our Reading Classics Seminar Series for Semester 1 2024, which will boost our Wednesday afternoons with constructive and stimulating lectures and discussions on various aspects of Classics research!

In this series of lectures, starting on 30 October 2024, we welcome a diverse group of speakers in our Departmental seminars. Our Semester 1 seminar series will explore a variety of topics and periods of Classical studies. All seminars are hybrid and will be livestreamed on MS Teams. No registration is required. Attendance is free and open to all!

The first session of our series is part of a public talk series on Generative AI and Ancient World Studies over Semester 1. These talks, starting 9 October 2024, are organized as part of the iGAIAS project and the Distorted History: AI’s Skewed Visions of the Ancient World exhibition at the Ure Museum of Archaeology. Registration is required for these talks, and a link for the 16 October 2024 session is available below.

For more information, contact e.m.m.aston@reading.ac.uk.

Below you can find a poster with all titles:

Full list of titles

16 October – 16:00-17:30 (EM G44)

Prof. Genevieve Liveley, University of Bristol, The silence of the LLMs – Speaking silence with generative AI. [Registration Link]

30 October – 16:00-17:30 (EM G25)

Dr. Sally Grainger, independent scholar, Cooking with silphium: experiments with Ferula asafoetida and Ferula drudeana.

20 November – 16:00-17:30 (EM G25)

Dr. Mathura Umachandran, University of Exeter, Race, Empire, and Decoloniality Seminar.

4 December – 16:00-17:30 (EM G25)

Dr. Annelies Casimir, University of Southampton, Networking with gods: Greek religious sites and the rise of Rome.

13 December – 16:00-17:30 (EM G25)

Dr. Ari Bryen, Vanderbilt University, Law among the degraded: two stories from the Roman Empire.

Classics success at the Doctoral Research Conference

On Wednesday 12th June, the University of Reading held the annual Doctoral Research Conference, an event which showcases the diversity of doctoral research undertaken at Reading.

Two of our own researchers, Adél Ternovacz and Daniel Bartle, presented posters on their research at the conference, and we would like to congratulate both of their contributions.

Adél Ternovacz discussing her poster.
Image curtesy of the Univeristy of Reading Doctoral and Researcher College.

Further congratulations go to Adél, whose poster won the prize.

The posters submitted by Adél and Daniel cover two very different, but equally interesting topics, which demonstrate the diversity of research within the Classics department.

Adél’s research poster presents a lunula pendant adorned with a Roman carnelian gem, discovered in a Sarmatian settlement in Tiszaföldvár, Hungary. Lunulae, crescent-shaped pendants worn by women and children, served as protective amulets in both Roman and Sarmatian cultures. In the Carpathian Basin, the Sarmatians—an Iranian people—were the most significant barbarian population during the Roman Imperial Period. This research explores how Sarmatian culture adapted and incorporated the Roman gem, deepening our understanding of the cultural exchange between the two civilizations.

Daniel Bartle discussing his poster.
Image curtesy of the Univeristy of Reading Doctoral and Researcher College.

Daniel’s poster focuses on the Indo-Iranian borderlands during the late fourth to third centuries BC and the diplomatic activity across it. This period would see the establishment of new empires on each side of the frontier, the Seleukids in Iran and the Maurya on the Ganges, representing a time of political transition and upheaval in the region. This research will examine three specific interactions between the two new states and their effects, the treaty of the Indus in 303 BC, the edicts of Ashoka, and the anabasis of Antiochus III, shedding light on the dynamic relationship of warfare, trade and gift exchange that existed across the frontier.

Both Daniel and Adél reflected positively on their experience of the event, commenting on the opportunity to interact with students and their work from across the university.

“The Doctoral Research Conference offers a fantastic opportunity to meet fellow students from various disciplines and learn about their projects. It was truly inspiring to see such a diverse range of innovative work.” – Adél Ternovacz

“The Doctoral Research Conference was an interesting experience involving both varied disciplines and means of presenting. Likewise, offering fresh perspectives from the other disciplines.” – Daniel Bartle

Once again, congratulations to Adél and Daniel, and to all the students who contributed to the event.

Adél Ternovacz

Upcoming Conference: Narrative and argument in Greco-Roman antiquity

On 4-5 July 2024, the University of Reading is hosting a two-day conference which seeks to re-investigate the relationship between narrative and argument in ancient literature (broadly defined).

Amidst strong trends in both rhetorical and narratological analysis, observations about the interplay between narratological structures and rhetorical methods of persuasion have tended to be at the margins of classical scholarship; but there are indications of a shift towards the foreground. For example, recent scholarship on Archaic and Classical Greek Lyric and Drama explores the discourse of ideology through the analysis of literary mechanisms and language shaping the political dimensions of the various genres. Another example of a recent shift is in the field of hagiography, where literary aspects are increasingly investigated in the context of the texts’ assumed ideology, resulting in some interesting insights into the unexpected complexities of the relationship between what the texts appear to want to the readers to do or believe, and the narrative strategies employed in these texts.

To explore and consolidate these trends, our conference brings together scholars interested in the interaction of political, literary, narratological, and cultural analysis of ancient literature to retrace the narrative mechanisms and discourses shaping the (im)balance between ideology, argument, and narration in ancient texts.

This conference will be held as a hybrid with both in-person and online attendees welcome. You can register your attendance here.

Summer Term 2024 Reading Classics Research Seminars

We are pleased to announce the launch of our Reading Classics Seminar Series for Summer Term 2024, which will boost our Wednesday afternoons with constructive and stimulating lectures and discussions on various aspects of Classics research!

In this series of lectures, starting on 24 April, we welcome a diverse group of speakers in our Departmental seminars. Our Summer seminar series will explore a variety of topics and periods of Classical studies. All seminars will be livestreamed on MS Teams; tune in every Wednesday at 4pm (unless otherwise stated)! Attendance is free and open to all! To attend please follow this link: https://bit.ly/3UkPo10. Below you can find a poster with all titles.

Full list of titles

24 April

Shaohui Wang, Northeast Normal University, China, and University of Cambridge, ἰὼ, ἰή, ἰέ – a survey of ritual cries and emotions in ancient Greek religion and the parallels in Chinese religious practice

1 May

Chris Pellin, University of Oxford, I want to be Great too – but how? Alexander, Augustus, and Livy

8 May – Postponed

Mathura Umanchandran, Exeter University, Race, Empire, and Decoloniality Seminar

15 May

Jordan Miller, University of Cambridge, Under the Bed and among the Dead: Monsters in Ancient Egypt

29 May

Polly Low, Durham University, Nothing to see here? Inscriptions and the early Athenian Empire

 

All (unless otherwise labelled) starting at 16:00 in Edith Morley 126J

For more information contact e.m.m.aston@reading.ac.uk

Butser Ancient Farm

As we get stuck into another busy term of 21st century university life, the week we spent as Roman school teachers on an ancient farm in Hampshire feels literal worlds away. But what a wonderful world it was…

L-R: Althea (Oxford Masters student), Aster (Reading undergraduate), Nadin (Reading Masters graduate, Co-runs the Ancient Schoolroom), Prof. Eleanor Dickey (Runs the Ancient Schoolroom), Daniela (Ancient Schoolroom trustee, lecturer at Naples), Jacinta (Reading undergraduate)

From the moment we arrived at Butser Ancient Farm, Aster and I were immersed in a new (or rather very old) way of life. From ancient breeds of four-horned sheep, to Roman-style cleaning equipment, it was as though we had stepped through a portal into a calmer, more peaceful world. After a quick look around, we were soon stuck into our chores, and I discovered that a traditional broomstick is surprisingly effective tool for ridding a school room of dust and cobwebs.

As dark descended, we called it a night and adjourned to the Anglo-Saxon period for dinner. Eleanor made us a delicious fried fish recipe from ancient Roman recipe-writer, Apicius. It was meant to be the tail of a large female tuna caught near Byzantium, but that proved difficult to source, so Lidl salmon fillets had to make do! Apicius recommended eating it with white wine vinegar, so we did, and it worked remarkably well!

After preparing a garlicy, cheesy paste (moretum) and olive relish for lunch the next day, we all went to our respective time periods to sleep – in my case an iron age round house. I don’t think any of us slept well that first night, due to nerves, excitement, and the unfamiliar surroundings, but my chosen hay bale was still remarkably comfortable.

After breakfast the next morning we got ourselves costumed, then waited expectantly for our first students to arrive. We didn’t have to wait long as, just after opening time, two girls in ribbons and yellow tunics bounced in with an exuberant, ‘salve magistra!’ and the Ancient Schoolroom was officially under way.

After that the days sped by as we all settled into a relaxing and fulfilling routine. The teaching was full on, but so much fun, and it was wonderful to see how engrossed the children (and some adults) became in the activities. The school room began to feel like a second home with an air of safety and serenity that I really hope, at least some, real ancient Roman schools had. I have some lovely memories: a girl and her grandmother sprawled on the floor happily matching Phaedrus’s fables with their respective morals; a group of children crowded around Charles, eagerly learning compound interest; adults leaving us with their charges while they went to get coffee, as their unexpectedly studious children didn’t want to stop learning; recognising the same children coming back on different days because they felt they hadn’t learnt enough the first time; children sitting contentedly at Aster’s feet, writing and drawing with ink for the first time; parents thanking us for allowing their children to express their knowledge and enthusiasm about Roman mythology; and, my favourite memory of all, a tiny 6-year-old boy sitting patiently on a bench waiting for ‘the lady’ (aka Professor Eleanor Dickey) to teach him more maths.

Of course, even teachers have to eat sometimes, and food played an important part in our time at Butser. Lunch was always a welcome affair of Roman or Celtic style bread, served with moretum, olive relish and sometimes even butter and honey!

Our Roman dinners were as delicious as they were diverse, ranging from a ‘simple’ meal of porridge cooked in a genuine porridge pot and served with freshly foraged blackberries, to a fish soup made with fresh mussels and a whole sea bass, expertly prepared by Nadin. And those were just the meals we prepared for ourselves! One evening we had the great privilege of dining with Sally Grainger, author of Cooking Apicius, and her husband Dr Christopher Grocock. We demolished a beautiful loaf of bread; tasted about seven different types of garum (I particularly liked the swordfish one); indulged in a rich stew full of chicken, sausage, and pork belly; and got to observe Sally making goat’s cheese and honey cakes, which were even tastier than they looked.

As well as teaching, cooking, and eating, our week at Butser seemed to help all of us learn and grow in other ways. Aster discovered a natural talent for reed-pen making and tried a whole host of unusual foods for the first time; I turned out to be very good at lighting and tending fires, and embraced my new role as ‘fire woman’; and we all learnt and taught how to make corn dollies at a festival of Lughnasadh hosted by the farm, where we also listened to stories, drank mead, and danced to fiddle music.

By the end of the week we had all got quite used to sleeping on hay bales and constantly smelling of smoke, but we never took for granted the ability to explore and forage in the countryside, or the late-night bonding around a roaring fire, or the magic of gazing into an unpolluted night sky at the shining moon and twinkling stars.

I cherish my memories of the Ancient Schoolroom’s first time at Butser, and I look forward to making many more in the summers to come!

Written by Jacinta Hunter

Autumn Term 2023 Reading Classics Research Seminars

We are pleased to announce the launch of our Reading Classics Seminar Series for Autumn Term 2023, which will boost our Wednesday afternoons with constructive and stimulating lectures and discussions on various aspects of Classics research!

In this series of lectures, starting on 4 October, we welcome a diverse group of speakers from both the UK and abroad in our Departmental seminars. Our Autumn seminar series will explore a variety of topics and periods of Classical studies. All seminars will be livestreamed on MS Teams; tune in every Wednesday at 4pm (unless otherwise stated)! Attendance is free and open to all! Below you can find a poster with all titles.

Full list of titles

4 October

Maya Muratov, Adelphi, With strings attached: Articulated figures in antiquity

11 October

Najee Olya, William & Mary, Re-visiting portrayals of Africans in ancient Greek art: Recurring problems and new questions

16 October – Gordon Lecture (17:00)

Véronique Dasen, Fribourg, Play or cheat?: Games in Greek and Roman antiquity

25 October

Anne Alwis, Kent, Model Ascetics?: Exemplarity in Theodoret of Cyrrhus’ Religious History, joining link bit.ly/3tmY5wL 

8 November

Lea Rees, Oxford, A landscape biography of Dahshur: Chronological, functional and social transformations, joining link bit.ly/48FjuS3

15 November

Summer Court, Reading, Playing at (demi-)god: Hercules’ club, mould-blown glass, and sensory experience

Andy Fox, Reading, The death grove at the heart of Seneca’s Thyestes, joining link: bit.ly/3tx1MjP

22 November – Locus Ludi Public Talk (18:00 EM 125)

Tim Penn, Oxford, More than just fun and games: Why study board games in Roman society?

Two New Modules Consider the Ancient World beyond the Myth of Whiteness

By now, many classicists have begun to recognise and to think about how the study of ancient Greece and Rome has contributed to promoting and upholding structures of white supremacy and other forms of racism. Part of the discipline of Classics’ role in supporting white supremacy has been in the elevation of ancient Greece and ancient Rome above other ancient societies, as something distinctly glorious and worthy of study. By lumping the diverse societies of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds together, a myth of a White, Western civilisation took shape, allowing those invested in such a myth to draw a straight line between, for example, fifth-century BCE Athens and the twentieth-century United States of America. Such narratives also serve to exclude societies constructed as non-White or non-European from the myth of civilisation. However, challenging such narratives remains controversial. A recent episode of ‘Horrible Histories’ was accused of reinventing history when it highlighted the fact that people with dark skin have been present in Britain since prehistory and that African soldiers in the Roman army were stationed in Britain. Such controversies serve to show that there remains an urgent need for a conversation on the assumed whiteness of the ancient world.

For several decades now, academics at the University of Reading’s Classics Department have been working to unpick this side of the discipline, thinking about how Classics has been used to promote ideologies of racism and colonialism, how those subject to racist and colonialist uses of the Classics have formulated their own responses to and resisted such uses, and how the legacies of ancient Greece and ancient Rome have been felt beyond the so-called West. Relatedly, Classicists at Reading have been turning to the idea of interconnected Global Antiquities, in order to decentre ancient Greece and Rome from perspectives on the ancient world. In 2023, two new undergraduate modules bring the research of staff in this area to the undergraduate syllabus, contributing an already diverse and boundary-pushing offering of modules.

In the Spring Term of 2023, Dr Sam Agbamu introduced a third-year module on ‘Race and Ethnicity in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds’. Taking students from the earliest texts of the Greco-Roman literary canon right up to contemporary Classical Reception, the module focuses on how ideas of race and ethnicity took root in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and how such ideas continue to shape the worlds we live in today. One of the aims of the module is to challenge the biological reality of race, by showing just how changeable conceptions of race in the ancient world were. As well as looking at how race was thought about in antiquity, students also study how authors, artists, and scholars racialised as ‘non-white’ have encountered the constructed whiteness of classical antiquity. The module encourages students to draw on their own experiences and perceptions of race and ethnicity in order to formulate personal responses to the texts and material studied. Part of this involves creative elements of coursework, in which students can respond to module material in a medium of their choosing, whether that be a piece of visual art, creative writing, or a film. The module is running again in the 2023/2024 academic year, and will be updated to take into account the rapidly developing scholarship in the field, as well as the changing global context in which the module situates itself.

In Spring 2024 Professor Rachel Mairs will be teaching a new second-year module on Ancient Ethiopia: The Aksumite Kingdom.  This module looks at the city of Aksum, in modern Ethiopia, and its empire in the third and fourth centuries CE.  Spectacular monuments remain at Aksum today: tall stelae used to mark the graves of kings, stone inscriptions, the ruins of palaces.  All of these speak to the Aksumite kingdom’s sense of its own power and place in the world.  Aksum is mentioned in a small number of ancient Greek and Roman historical sources, but this module takes a different angle by focussing on Aksumite accounts of their own history: whether inscriptions from the period of the empire itself, or later Ethiopian and Eritrean written and oral histories which give the memory of Aksum a special place in local identities in the northern Horn of Africa.

 

Written by Sam Agbamu and Rachel Mairs

Tragedy Queered: A conference to explore the impact of Graeco-Roman tragedy on queer culture (6-7 July 2023)

Greek and Roman tragedy has served as a platform to explore and discuss central issues regarding politics, identities, and societal issues, ranging from feminism, race, fascism, and communism to abortion, generational tensions, and national identity. LGBTQI+ issues of identities, desires and politics have also found a useful tool in ancient tragedy as a channel for exploration, discussion, and vindication. Tragedy has been queer, queered, and queering for many a decade now.

The international and interdisciplinary conference Tragedy Queered, which took place at the University of Reading on the 6th and 7th of July 2023, precisely explored the dialogue, relationships and cross-fertilisations between Graeco-Roman tragedy and queer culture. The conference developed substantial and consistent insights into a phenomenon that has remained almost untouched in scholarship. All fifteen speakers, from provenances as diverse as L’Aquila, London, Santa Barbara, Philadelphia, Oxford, and New York, and ranging in academic positions from postgraduate students to full professors, explored and analysed the use of ancient tragedy in queer culture in a vast array of media, including novels, drag, theatrical stagings, poetry, dance, film, multi-media performance, and biography. The papers, headed by the keynote speech on Judith Butler, Freud, and the house of Oedipus by Professor Orrells (KCL), exhibited a diverse plethora of queer-tragic receptions and dialogues. Among other issues, they explored the importance of the tragic character and plots of Helen and Philoctetes regarding the loss and struggles of AIDS in novels and drag, queer love and loss in dance and multimedia performance, how Athena is a good or bad example for trans experience, the tragic in pre-Stonewall poetic writing and the translation, tragic structures, plots and characters in film and theatre, and what can queer theory bring to ancient tragic texts and performances.

The conference and its speakers managed to do far more than I expected as organiser. It was able to establish points of departure for many aspects in the study of the relationship between tragedy and queer culture and also of the tragic and the queer; it was able to pay attention to queer culture before and after the Stonewall Riots, the historiographical starting-point for queer liberation; it was able to attest to queer lives, queer history and queer theory and the interweaved presence of tragedy in them; and finally, and perhaps most importantly, it was able to further consolidate and multiply a community of queer scholars, students, artists and people, past, present, and future. Keep your eyes peeled for the volume that will result from the conference, so you can see with you own eyes what Tragedy Queered was able to reveal, explore and unite on two summery tragic-queer days in Reading.

Special thanks to the Tragedy Queered sponsors: Institute of Classical Studies (SAS, UoL); The Department of Classics (UoR); Dean for Diversity and Inclusion (UoR); Research Dean for Heritage & Creativity (UoR). I am very grateful to Matthew Knight for his excellent and indispensable work in designing the poster, programme, and name tags and to Josh Ison for his essential help in guaranteeing that the conference ran smoothly and enjoyably. Thanks also to colleagues in the department for their support and encouragement.

 

Written by Dr. Oliver Baldwin