The relationship between the Homeric epics and archaeology has been approached through the lens of Homeric archaeology, which involved matching the epics with the archaeological record and identifying realia of Homer’s heroes. However, a range of new approaches have recently revolutionised this field. Drawing from these approaches, this public lecture offers a regional and diachronic analysis of Homeric stories about Crete, an assessment of the reception of these stories by the island’s inhabitants throughout antiquity, and an account of their impact on Medieval to modern literature and art. The lecture shows how Cretan interest in Homer peaked in the Hellenistic period. . I also argue, however, that Homeric stories were familiar to some Cretans from much earlier. This argument relies on an analysis of the archaeological assemblage of a Knossian tomb of the 11th century BC, which included a range of arms that is exceptional for both Aegean archaeology and the Homeric epics. In the epics, this equipment is carried only by the Knossian hero Meriones, whose poetic persona can be traced back to the late bronze age on philological and linguistic grounds. This lecture argues that the Knossian burial assemblage was staged to reference the persona of Meriones, therefore suggesting the familiarity of some Cretans with early poetry that eventually filtered into the Homeric epics

Kotsonas, Antonis

University of Queensland eSpace

 Page 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
RESEARCH SEMINARS AND PUBLIC LECTURES 
 
2nd SEMESTER 2018  
 
Discipline of Classics and Ancient History 
 
 
17 August 
1. Tyla Cascaes (The University of Queensland) ‘Political Model or Model 
Enemy: Polarising Receptions of Julius Caesar’.  
2. Jacqueline Webber (The University of Queensland) ‘Work in Life and Death: 
The Nauicularii of Italy and Beyond’.    
 23 August 3. Dr Antonis Kotsonas (The University of Cincinnati) ‘Homer and the Archaeology of Crete’ (Public Lecture).  
 
24 August   
 
4. Dr Antonis Kotsonas (The University of Cincinnati) ‘Containers, Commodities 
and Greek Colonisation in the Mediterranean of the 8th Century BC’.  
 
7 September  
 
5. Dr David M. Pritchard (The University of Queensland) ‘The Standing of 
Sailors in Democratic Athens’.  
 
 14 September  
 
6. Dr Amelia Brown (The University of Queensland) ‘The Politics of Greek 
Public Portrait Sculpture in Late Antiquity’.  
5 October 7. Assoc. Prof. Josephine Quinn (Oxford University) ‘Carthaginian Dido: Reclaiming a Roman Queen’.   
7 October 8. Assoc. Prof. Josephine Quinn (Oxford University) ‘The Phoenicians from Antiquity to the Arab Spring’ (Public Lecture).  
 
12 October   
 
9. Scot McPhee (The University of Queensland) ‘Epistemology and Geography 
in T. Livius ab urbe condita libri’.  
10. Dr Janice Crowley (The University of Tasmania) ‘The Sealings from the First 
Palace at Phaistos’.  
17 October 11. Prof. Stephen Harrison (Oxford University) ‘History, Politics and Vergil’s Aeneid’ (Public Lecture).   
19 October 
12. Ryan W. Strickler (The University of Queensland) ‘The New Melchizedek: 
The Priestly Ambitions of Christian Roman Emperors’. 
13. Filippo Attinelli (The University of Queensland) ‘Legalising and Stabilising 
Friendship in Foreign Relations during the Roman Republic’.  
 
Nos. 1-2, 4-7, 9-10 and 12-13 are research seminars. They are held on Fridays from 4 pm in room 
216 of the Michie Building and are followed by a reception. Nos. 3, 8 and 11 are public lectures. Dr 
Kotsonas is the AAIA Visiting Professor for 2018. His lecture begins at 6 pm in room E215 of the 
Forgan-Smith Building. Assoc. Prof. Quinn is the Milns Professor for 2018. Her public lecture 
begins at 2 pm in room E302 of the same building. The lecture of Prof. Harrison begins at 2 pm in 
the same room. There will be podcasts of nos. 3-8 and 10. Questions about this program should be 
directed to Dr Pritchard (d.pritchard@uq.edu.au or +61 401 955 160).   
 
 
 Page 2 
 
TITLES AND ABSTRACTS 
 
Filippo Attinelli (The University of Queensland) ‘Legalising and Stabilising Friendship in 
Foreign Relations during the Roman Republic’. 
 
Although its origin is controversial, amicitia was one of the most significant instruments of Roman 
foreign relations. Several scholars have supported the idea that amicitia was the outcome of a previous 
international treaty, which aimed at guaranteeing military neutrality. However, the sources do not 
provide a clear view of how friendship was categorised within the legal system of the Romans. The 
historical cases of friendship that Rome had with Rhodes, Attalus I and Antiochus III, show that, 
already in the mid-Republic amicitia was an independent instrument to regulate foreign relations. In 
order to exist, friendship did not need to be connected to a previous treaty. Nonetheless, amicitia was 
characterised by juridical instability. The legal stability of foreign relations was the reason why the 
Romans ratified friendship by means of a specific category of treaty, namely foedus amicitiae causa. 
As a consequence, when it was connected to a foedus, amicitia provided content to the inter-
community agreement. Nevertheless, the fact that a previous amicitia could be the background of a 
following foedus did not exclude the chance that a foedus could be made to create amicitia as well. 
 
Dr Amelia Brown (The University of Queensland) ‘The Politics of Greek Public Portrait 
Sculpture in Late Antiquity’.  
 
Late antiquity saw a decline in the quantity and quality of production of marble sculpture, even in 
Greece and Asia Minor, where the tradition of public portraits started, and also where it lasted the 
longest. This ancient tradition of cities honouring benefactors with public statues diminished but 
persisted in the 5th century AD, and then ended with portraits of imperial officials and emperors. The 
carving of marble then continued for architectural elements alone into the Byzantine era. Yet the last 
statue bases still warmly praise the naturalism of the new works, and the offices of the honorands, 
even as their proportions appear more awkward, and their material of manufacture clearly reused. 
Literary sources testify to the positive political significance of statues when put up, and the negative 
reaction when torn down. Yet in the 6th century most statues of officials and emperors were torn 
down, reused for building material or discarded. While cult statues bear the brunt of Christian zeal in 
texts, just as many human portraits were marked with crosses or thrown down wells. This seminar 
looks at some new examples of recently excavated or studied portraits from Greece It suggests that 
contrasts between literary sources and archaeological evidence show a clear transition in political 
uses of portraits throughout late antiquity. 
 
Tyla Cascaes (The University of Queensland) ‘Political Model or Model Enemy: Polarising 
Receptions of Julius Caesar’. 
 
Modern receptions of Julius Caesar are complex and often contradictory. This complexity derives 
from the nature of Caesar’s character, the biases of the ancient accounts and the individual 
circumstances governing the receptions. This seminar argues that modern receptions select an image 
of Caesar derived from the ancient accounts or construct an image within the parameters they create. 
In the years following his assassination, Caesar was used positively and negatively, either as a 
political model or a model enemy. Caesar’s successors and assassins respectively deployed these 
approaches, the former by stressing their connections to Caesar, the latter by emphasising Caesar’s 
faults as an attempt to justify the righteousness of their cause. Modern receptions have long been 
governed by these parameters. Individuals could emphasise their links to Caesar to bolster their claims 
to power. Alternatively, one could identify their opponent as being a Caesar-like tyrant, just as the 
conspirators identified Caesar as a tyrant. This seminar demonstrates that the parameters established 
by ancient portrayals are exceedingly useful in deciphering contradictory modern receptions of 
Caesar. 
 
 
 Page 3 
 
Dr Janice Crowley (The University of Tasmania) ‘The Sealings from the First Palace at 
Phaistos’. 
 
Aegean glyptic, through its images on seals, signet rings and sealings, gives us one of the best sources 
for understanding life and art in bronze-age Crete and Greece from Early Minoan II (c. 2600 BC) to 
the fall of the Mainland Palaces at the end of Late Helladic IIIB (c. 1200). Only pottery can claim so 
long and continuous an artistic (and functional) tradition of some 14 centuries. But pottery does not 
carry the range of subject-matter provided by the seals. This seminar focusses on a closed and dated 
archive of material from bronze-age Crete at the end of Middle Minoan II (c 1700 BC), the sealings 
from the First Palace at Phaistos. Sealings are the original impressions of seals or signets, in clay, 
made on objects or message packets in the palaces or villas. They survive for us only because the 
buildings were destroyed by fire burnt, baking the clay with the image imprinted on it. The Phaistos 
sealings provide 322 images which, taken together, open all the fields of enquiry into Aegean art and 
iconography, allowing us to look back at the early creations and forward to the great efflorescence of 
Minoan high art.  
 
Prof. Stephen Harrison (Oxford University) ‘History, Politics and Vergil’s Aeneid’.   
 
This talk considers Vergil's Aeneid against the background of the history and the politics of the period 
of the poet’s life and the poem’s composition (c.70-19 BC). This was a tumultuous period indeed in 
the history of Rome, which saw the collapse of the Roman republic and the rise of a new style of 
monarchy with the establishment of the principate under Augustus. It looks at allusions to historical 
characters, both the several appearances of Augustus himself in the poem through the device of 
prophesying the future, and the poem’s potential use of symbolism and analogy: how far can its hero 
Aeneas be a version of Augustus, or its tragic heroine Dido a version of Cleopatra? It considers the 
range of political views to be found  in the Aeneid: is the poem supportive of Augustus, and how does 
it deal with the painful topic of civil war? And what are we to make of the way the poem finishes at 
the very moment when Aeneas kills his main adversary Turnus, without further interpretation or 
comment? 
 
Dr Antonis Kotsonas (The University of Cincinnati) ‘Containers, Commodities and Greek 
Colonisation in the Mediterranean of the 8th Century BC’.  
 
The 8th century BC is particularly important for Mediterranean history. The Greeks placed there the 
beginning of their history, and the Romans dated the foundation of Rome then. This paper focuses on 
the Greek colonisation that began in this century and its impact on the regeneration of Greek and 
Mediterranean economy. This seminar reviews the traditional ‘agrarian’ and ‘commercial’ models of 
Greek colonisation. It evaluates the relevance of the understudied ware of transport containers and 
the commodities that they contained. Recent research has demonstrated that the widespread 
production and circulation of many Aegean amphora-types dates from the 8th  century, thus largely 
synchronising this phenomenon with the beginning of Greek colonisation. The seminar demonstrates 
how a general consensus on the ‘agrarian’ model of colonization of a region can be reassessed on the 
basis of transport containers and the commodities they contained. 
 
Dr Antonis Kotsonas (The University of Cincinnati) ‘Homer and the Archaeology of Crete’.  
 
The relationship between the Homeric epics and archaeology has been approached through the lens 
of Homeric archaeology, which involved matching the epics with the archaeological record and 
identifying realia of Homer’s heroes. However, a range of new approaches have recently 
revolutionised this field. Drawing from these approaches, this public lecture offers a regional and 
diachronic analysis of Homeric stories about Crete, an assessment of the reception of these stories by 
the island’s inhabitants throughout antiquity, and an account of their impact on Medieval to modern 
literature and art. The lecture shows how Cretan interest in Homer peaked in the Hellenistic period. . 
I also argue, however, that Homeric stories were familiar to some Cretans from much earlier. This 
argument relies on an analysis of the archaeological assemblage of a Knossian tomb of the 11th 
century BC, which included a range of arms that is exceptional for both Aegean archaeology and the 
 Page 4 
 
Homeric epics. In the epics, this equipment is carried only by the Knossian hero Meriones, whose 
poetic persona can be traced back to the late bronze age on philological and linguistic grounds. This 
lecture argues that the Knossian burial assemblage was staged to reference the persona of Meriones, 
therefore suggesting the familiarity of some Cretans with early poetry that eventually filtered into the 
Homeric epics.   
 
Scot McPhee (The University of Queensland) ‘Epistemology and Geography in T. Livius ab 
urbe condita libri’. 
 
This seminar explores the way in which Livy used landscape in his history to mediate themes of 
knowledge. It investigates questions concerning Livy's epistemological frameworks and how they 
were constituted in his narratives of the landscape and geography, and how his characters understood 
them and were shown to use that knowledge in the history. In particular, the seminar concentrates on 
case-studies from the victory of L. Aemilius Paulus over Perseus at the battle of Pydna in book 44, 
the ill-fated expedition of Perseus’s father, Philip, to the Haemus mountains in book 40, and Scipio’s 
capture of New Carthage in Spain in book 26. The seminar proposes that the effectiveness of 
knowledge in and about the landscape, in both acquisition and use, is wedded to the representation of 
an empirical unity of natural, religious and political components into a system of ‘moral knowledge’, 
which victorious Roman commanders display and deploy. 
 
Dr David M. Pritchard (The University of Queensland) ‘The Standing of Sailors in Democratic 
Athens. 
 
Ancient historians regularly argue that the Athenian dēmos (‘people’) held sailors in much lower 
esteem than hoplites. They cite in support of this the extant funeral speech of Pericles. Certainly this 
famous speech said a lot about courageous hoplites but next to nothing about sailors. Yet it is also 
clear that this was not a typical example of the genre. Funeral speeches usually gave a detailed account 
of Athenian military history. In 431 BC Pericles decided to skip such an account because of the 
difficult politics that he faced. In rehearsing military history funeral speeches always mentioned naval 
battles and recognised sailors as courageous. Old comedy and the other genres of public oratory 
depicted sailors in the same positive terms. Their sailors displayed no less courage than hoplites, with 
both groups equally benefitting the state. All these non-elite genres assumed that a citizen fulfilled 
his martial duty by serving as either a sailor or a hoplite. They used a new definition of courage that 
both groups of combatants could easily meet. In tragedy, by contrast, characters and choruses used 
the hoplite extensively as a norm. In epic poetry heroes spoke in the same hoplitic idiom. By copying 
this idiom the tragic poets were setting their plays more convincingly in the distant heroic age. In 
spite of this, tragedy still recognised Athens as a major seapower and could depict sailors as 
courageous. In Athenian democracy speakers and playwrights had to articulate the viewpoint of non-
elite citizens. Their works put beyond doubt that the dēmos esteemed sailors as highly as hoplites. 
 
Assoc. Prof. Josephine Quinn (Oxford University) ‘Carthaginian Dido: Reclaiming a Roman 
Queen’.   
 
Ancient Carthage was a city of heroines and heroes, and the greatest of all was its founder-queen, 
Dido, who was immortalised (but also killed) in Virgil’s Aeneid. Too often, however, Dido is read 
through a purely Roman lens for what she can tell us about Roman culture and ideas. This seminar 
argues that the basic story of Dido’s foundation of Carthage that has survived for us in Greek and 
Roman accounts is actually a Carthaginian myth, not simply a story told about the Carthaginians. It 
also makes the case for the particular importance of this story at Carthage in the early Hellenistic 
period. The seminar concludes by considering what happens to the story in later imaginations as the 
story transforms from a local colonial myth to a Roman imperial one.  
 
 
 
 Page 5 
 
Assoc. Prof. Josephine Quinn (Oxford University) ‘The Phoenicians from Antiquity to the Arab 
Spring’ (Public Lecture). 
 
The Phoenicians are often forgotten in histories of the ancient Mediterranean that focus on Greece 
and Rome, but long before the Greeks and Romans these sailors and traders built the first city-states, 
invented the alphabet, discovered the pole star and colonised the west. They still remain mysterious, 
however, and there is a serious question over whether they even existed as a self-conscious political, 
ethnic or cultural group. Yet since their own time, ‘being Phoenician’ has been a powerful political 
and cultural tool in the hands of politicians and writers from Roman emperors to Irish-Enlightenment 
scholars to Lebanese nationalists in the 20th century, playing a particularly important and interesting 
role in the invention of new pasts for new nation-states. This public lecture looks both at the 
Phoenicians in their own terms and at their different reinventions over time.  
 
Ryan W. Strickler (The University of Queensland) ‘The New Melchizedek: The Priestly 
Ambitions of Christian Roman Emperors’. 
 
With the rise of imperial Christianity emperors frequently inserted themselves into doctrinal affairs. 
Safeguarding orthodoxy became a matter of strategic concern and, therefore, imperial prerogative. 
Over time emperors tried to endow their office with its own priesthood. Scholars locate this ambition 
in Constantine the Great’s claim to be a ‘bishop of outsiders’, with its clearest expression in Leo III’s 
declaration, ‘I am Emperor and Priest’. However, little evidence survives between Constantine and 
Leo III (attesting to the development of an imperial priesthood. An exception is found during the 
reign of Constans II, the monk, Maximus the Confessor, was tried for treason in Constantinople, in 
part, due to his denial that the emperor was a priest. Court officials argued that the imperial office 
was a priesthood based on the biblical Melchizedek. This seminar traces the development of the 
priesthood of the Christian Roman emperor, with a focus on the Heraclian dynasty. Of interest are 
the statements by the dynasty’s supporters. Here, we consider priestly motifs in panegyric literature, 
imperial edicts pertaining to religion, as well as the arguments of opponents, such as Maximus the 
Confessor. 
 
Jacqueline Webber (The University of Queensland) ‘Work in Life and Death: The Nauicularii 
of Italy and Beyond’.    
 
Epigraphic media produced by and for occupational tradespeople is an area that, despite the relative 
quantity of surviving evidence, is not addressed adequately in current scholarship. Epigraphic 
evidence produced during the Roman empire was set up in many different places and for many 
different reasons, and a greater understanding of the use of epigraphic media by non-elite and 
occupational groups is necessary to help us understand why and how a noticeable portion of the 
empire’s population chose to identify or were identified with their occupations through this media. 
This seminar analyses the use of nauicularius, ‘ship-owner’, in and on different types of epigraphic 
media in the first two centuries AD. The seminar highlights the civic and the honorary contexts of 
nauicularius in different Italian towns, as well as addressing the funerary context where occupational 
titles appear relatively regularly. In doing so it aims to highlight the different contexts and locations 
where occupational titles appear.  
 
Dr David M. Pritchard 
 
The University of Queensland 
 
d.pritchard@uq.edu.au 
 
 


Antonis Kotsonas, 'Homer and the Archaeology of Crete', Audio Recording Only, Seminar Series, Discipline of Classics and Ancient History, The University of Queensland (Australia)

https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:e247aa5/Kotsonas_Public_Lecture.pdf

Antonis Kotsonas, 'Homer and the Archaeology of Crete', Audio Recording Only, Seminar Series, Discipline of Classics and Ancient History, The University of Queensland (Australia)

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of Queensland eSpace