The ERC-funded Project FRRAnt (Ordering, Constructing, Empowering: The Fragments of the Roman Republican Antiquarians, PI Valentina Arena, UCL) is delighted to invite you to the international conference:
The Hellenistic World of Roman Republican Antiquarianism
UCL, South Wing, Institute of Advanced Studies, Room G17, Forum
2-4 February 2023
The object of this conference is to advance the scholarly understanding of the phenomenon of Roman Republican antiquarianism within a wide-ranging treatment of the relationship of Roman antiquarianism to the various developments in the Greek writing, theory, and scholarly praxis of the Hellenistic period. Previous studies on Varro and his Greek predecessors have demonstrated the fruitfulness of inquiry into his Hellenistic sources. However, while these contributions have laid valuable groundwork for our knowledge of specific aspects of Varro’s work, a comprehensive treatment of the broader cultural phenomenon of Roman Republican antiquarianism and its relations with the diverse currents of the Hellenistic intellectual world has yet to be undertaken.
This conference aims to fill this gap by presenting an extensive assessment of Roman antiquarians’ engagement with the research practices, organisational structures, patterns of thought, and investigative methods of the Hellenistic writers and intellectuals in whose orbit they pursued their own unique project. Its ultimate objective is to explore how, in the face of the dynamic Hellenophone intellectual community that surrounded them, Republican Roman writers interpreted, reshaped, and even subverted inherited Greek traditions, developing new ways of thinking and writing about their past in answer to urgent contemporary concerns.
Programme
Thursday, 2 February 2023
1.45-2.00p.m. Coffee and introduction
— RELIGIOUS ANTIQUARIANISM: THE WORLD OF THE GODS
2.00–2.45 p.m. Kenneth Yu, ‘Wonders, Marvels, and Epiphanies: Ordering Religious Knowledge in Hellenistic and Imperial Greece’
2.245–3.30 p.m. Massimo Giuseppetti, ‘Religious Festivals and Scholarly Discourse in the Greek World before the Roman Empire’
3.30–3.45 p.m. Coffee break
3.45–4.30 p.m. Dan-el Padilla Peralta, ‘Slavery and theology in Varro’s ARD’
4.30–5.00 p.m. Tim Cornell, discussant
5.00pm Drinks, South Cloister, UCL
Friday, 3 February 2023
9.00–9.15 a.m. Coffee
— LIFE IN COMMON: CUSTOMS, INSTITUTIONS, AND LAWS
9.15–10.00 a.m. Dario Mantovani, ‘Between antiquarianism and law: Roman jurists and the use of the past’
10.00–10.45 a.m. Domenico Giordani, ‘Varro’s Antiquitates rerum humanarum: Defining Roman Republican Antiquarianism’
10.45–11.00 a.m. Coffee break
11.00–11.45 a.m. Paola Ceccarelli, ‘Collecting facts, inventing traditions – antiquarianism as a discourse of creative empiricism’
11.45 a.m.–12.15 p.m. Clifford Ando, discussant
12.15–12.45 p.m. Open discussion
12.45–2.00 p.m. Lunch at UCL
2.00–2.15 p.m. Coffee
— ORDERING TIME AND SPACE
2.15–3.00 p.m. Stefan Schorn, ‘The edition of the Greek biographers and antiquarians in FGrHist IV’
3.00–3.45 p.m. Christopher Baron, ‘The Western Greek Perspective in the Roman Tradition’
3.45–4.30 p.m. Nino Luraghi, ‘Diodoros the Periegete: Atthidography and antiquarianism in Early Hellenistic Athens’
4.30–4.45 p.m. Coffee break
4.45–5.30 p.m. Antonino Pittà, ‘“First times” as touchstones: late Republican antiquarianism and the origins of civilizations’
5.30–6.00 p.m. Andrew Riggsby, discussant
6.00–6.30 p.m. Open discussion
6.30 p.m. Drinks, South Cloisre, UCL
Saturday, 4 February 2023
9.00–9.15 a.m. Coffee
— STRUCTURES OF KNOWLEDGE: GRAMMAR AND SCHOLARSHIP
9.15–10.00 a.m. Franco Montanari, ‘The evolution of ancient Greek scholarship. From Zenodotus’ revolution to the Erudite collections’
10.00–10.45 a.m. James E.G. Zetzel, ‘Graeca Latina: The Chronology of Influence’
10.45–11.00 a.m. Coffee break
11.00–11.45 a.m. Adam Gitner, ‘Antiphrastic Etymologies between Greece and Rome’
11.45 a.m.–12.15 p.m.Glenn Most, discussant
12.15–12.45 p.m. Open discussion
12.45–2.00 p.m. Lunch
— SCIENCE AND NATURE: NUMBERS AND THE COSMOS
2.00–2.45 p.m. Richard Marshall, ‘Natural History by Numbers: Varro and the Doxographical Tradition’
2.45– 3.30 p.m. Liba Taub, ‘De architecture IX: Vitruvius and the history of science and horology’
3.30–4.15 p.m. Katharina Volk, discussant
4.15–4.30 p.m. Coffee break
The conference will be held in person. Please register via Eventbrite.
For any queries, please contact: frrant@ucl.ac.uk