Emilia Barbiero (New York University)
Women at Center Stage, Or: Plautinisches im Aristainetos
Description: It is well established that the Letters of Aristainetos are replete with intertextual references to New Comedy. But what about Roman Comedy? In my paper, I reveal a sustained engagement with the Plautine corpus throughout this late-antique epistolary collection, showing that Aristainetos borrows from Plautus' cast of characters and typical premises, even reproducing specific scenes. And yet this Latin model material is transformed in Aristainetos' hands:in the Letters, various scenarios drawn from the fabula palliata have been inverted, retold from a particularly female perspective to create paralogical narratives spun out of Plautus' plays.
Sponsors: This event has been generously funded by the Boston University Center for the Humanities.
Event contact to appear in listing: sds74@bu.edu. Event Series (if not listed): New Approaches to Classics.
Monday, November 16, 2026, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY; CAS Building, Rm. 313.
For more info visit www.bu.edu. Thomas Schmidt (University of Fribourg)
Thomas Schmidt (Professor of Classical Philology, University of Fribourg)
The Materiality of the 'Plutarchan Book’ The Greek biographer and moralist Plutarch of Chaeronea (45–125 CE) is well known as the author of the Parallel Lives, a collection of 23 pairs of biographies, each comparing a famous Greek and a famous Roman. Immensely influential in the West since their rediscovery during the Renaissance, these works were already well known and widely circulated in Late Antiquity. Drawing on papyrological evidence, this lecture will focus on the bibliological characteristics and the transmission of what is commonly referred to as the "Plutarchan Book.".
Event Series (if not listed): The Houghton-Medieval Studies Lecture on Early Book History.
Monday, November 16, 2026, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Houghton Library, Edison & Newman Room.
Book Celebration in honor of Leah Whittington
Harvard Classics Lectures
Celebration in honor of Leah Whittington’s book, Antiquity Made Whole: The Renaissance Continuation of Ancient Literature.
Event Series: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome. Event Series (if not listed): The Early Modern Workshop at Harvard University.
Tuesday, November 17, 2026, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Thompson Room, Barker Center, Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit emworkshop.fas.harvard.edu. Harry Saunders (Harvard)
Event Series: GSAS Workshop "Indo-European and Historical Linguistics”.
Thursday, November 19, 2026, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Boylston Hall 335.
Nathaniel Hess (Warburg Institute)
"Indescribable Textures: Ecphrasis and the Problem of Images in the Latin Poetry of Reformation-era Italy".
Event Series (if not listed): Classical Receptions Workshop.
Friday, November 20, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Boylston 237.
Ian Wilson (Harvard University)
"Edifice and Artifice: Innovating Sacred Ecologies at Late Antique Heliopolis (Baalbek, Lebanon)".
Event Series: Methods and Practice in Classics Workshop.
Friday, November 20, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Boylston Hall 237, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA.
Patrick Burns (ISAW/New York University)
How to Fix Your First Billion Latin Typos: AI & Philology at Astronomical Scale
Billions—that’s right, billions!—of errors reside in Latin texts online, a situation created in part from uneven OCR quality in mass digitization projects. We could use this text data to train state-of-the-art Latin language models for tasks like question answering, text summarization, and machine translation, among others, if only these errors could be remediated. In this talk, I discuss my research in discovering and resolving error-prone Latin text at astronomical scale, including experiments in deploying and learning to “trust” agentic AI in the development of philological self-correcting systems. The key question I ask for our AI-inflected times, as applicable to Latin as any other language or humanities discipline: how do we responsibly encourage human-computer collaboration in our research?
Sponsored by the Catherine Frisone Scott Center for Italian Cultural Studies and the Classics & Religious Studies Department,…
Event contact to appear in listing: Jenni Glaser, jenni.glaser@umb.edu.
Tuesday, December 1, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
UMASS BOSTON; Campus Center (U02-2550), 100 Morrissey Blvd. Boston, MA 02125.
Mauro Bonazzi (Universty of Bologna)
Work in Progress in Ancient Philosophy Series, Reason and Action in Plato's Psychology
In this talk I examine Plato's psychology through a tension between two accounts of reason in the Republic: the practical, supervisory role emphasized in Book IV and the desire for knowledge and contemplation foregrounded in Book IX. I argue that appeals to reason's desire for the Good do not fully reconcile these accounts, since the capacity to govern does not entail a desire to rule. Rather, the philosopher's psychic harmony emerges as a consequence of contemplation: intellectual desire weakens competing appetites, while contemplation of divine order promotes assimilation to it. Comparisons with the Phaedrus and the Timaeus further suggest that our deepest identity lies in the contemplative intellect rather than in the tripartite soul as a whole. This interpretation reveals significant continuities across the dialogues and invites reconsideration of the priority of contemplation over practical and political activity.
Event contact to appear in listing: arruzzac@bu.edu.
Tuesday, December 1, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY, 745 Commonwealth Ave # STH 525.
Zachary Rothstein-Dowden (Harvard)
Event Series: GSAS Workshop "Indo-European and Historical Linguistics”.
Thursday, December 3, 2026, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Boylston Hall 335.
Harvard Classics Department Seminar Series (Jan Ziolkowski)
Title TBD.
Event Series: Harvard Classics Departmental Seminar Series.
Tuesday, January 26, 2027, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Plimpton Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St. Cambridge, MA.