Durham/Edinburgh/Glasgow
Network on Ancient Epistolography
Second Meeting
Durham 1st May 2026
Organizers: Roy Gibson, Andrew Morrison, Janja Soldo
Venue: Ritson Room, Durham Department of Classics & Ancient History, 38 North Bailey, Durham DH1 3EU
Attendance at the workshop is free, with lunch and tea/coffee provided throughout the day; but spaces are limited: email roy.k.gibson@durham.ac.uk to reserve your place by 30 March 2026.
The event will take place in-person only. There are (alas) no funds to help with travel or accommodation.
Programme
08.55-09.00: Welcome: Janja Soldo
Greek pseudepigraphic / fictional letters
Chair: Andrew Morrison
09.00-9.30: Tobias Hirsch (Nuremberg): Putting the Platonic Letters in Order: A Pen-Pal Break-Up and the Legacy of Dion
9.30-10.00: Sabira Hajdarević (Zadar): Hunger Games: Parasites in Greek Fictional Epistolography
10.00-10.30: Claire Rachel Jackson (Ghent): Letters, Novels, Reception: Aristaenetus Ep. 1.13 and Epistolary Fiction
10.30-11.00 tea / coffee break
Cicero
Chair: Roy Gibson
11.00-11.30: Barbara del Giovane (Firenze): Mirifice capior facetiis: Cicero’s Letters to Papirius Paetus (Fam. 9,15-26). Theory and Practice of facetum as an Existential Strategy of Survival
11.30-12.00: Laura Losito (Swansea): The Sound of Friendship: Rhythm and Relationship in Cicero’s Letters
12.00-12.30: Matilde Oliva (Firenze): Healing Grief in Letters: Cicero’s Ad Atticum 12 and the Making of the Consolatio
12.30-14.00 lunch break
Seneca and Pliny
Chair: Janja Soldo
14.00-14.30: Caitlin Spencer (Durham): Sicily and Seneca in Pliny Epistles 4.11
14.30-15.00: Frances Merrill (NYU): Pliny’s Incorporeal Presence: φαντάσματα and Metaliterature in Epistles 7.27
15.00-15.20 tea / coffee break
Symmachus
Chair: Roy Gibson
15.20-15.50: Andreas Abele (Tübingen): What is the ‘Roundness’ of Q. Symmachus? A Neoplatonic Reading of his Authorial Letter Collection
15.50-16.20: Katharina Blaas (Tübingen): Symmachus and Cicero. An underestimated literary relationship?
16.20-16.30 tea / coffee break
Greek late antiquity
Chair: Andrew Morrison
16.30-17.00: Michele Cova (Venezia/Udine/Trieste): Comic strategies in Libanius’ Letters between παιδεία and βωμολοχία
17.00-17.30: Davide Azzolin (SNS)” “A Shower of Letters:” Reviewing the Formation of John Chrysostom’s Epistolary Collection(s)
Note: this is not a Classical Association event – please contact the organisers directly with any enquiries.