News and Events

The Ancient Art of Hospitality

The Herald

'THE Greeks and Romans knew what to do about asylum seekers. Our very language reflects the ancient nature of the problem. Refugee, asylum, migrant, sanctuary, all are derived from Greek and Latin roots. Yet the difference between the ancient response and the modern one is striking. For the Greeks and Romans, the correct action to take wasn't debatable. Every right-thinking person knew what to do. When people were washed up on your shore, you fed and clothed them, and offered them a helping hand.'

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Classics recruit focuses on politically incorrect Greek

The Australian

Kevin Lee Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr Sebastiana Nervegna, speaks to the Australian's 'Higher Education Supplement' commentator, Luke Slattery about soap opera, comedy, sex and the Greeks, and Classics at the University of Sydney:

'ON my way to interview Sebastiana Nervegna, the latest recruit to a buoyant University of Sydney classics department, I give the address to the taxi driver. "You're interviewing an academic," he snorts. "How exciting. Not."

'His scorn evaporates when I explain that Nervegna is an expert in Menander, a late 4th century Greek playwright who refocused Athenian comedy on domestic intrigues: his tightly constructed plots are driven by sensational lusts and infidelities, peopled with the rich and the poor.

'"So he invented the soap opera," asserts the cabbie with attitude. "Did he also invent farce?' Minutes later I put the question to Nervegna, and she explains that although Menander's work seems to have inaugurated romantic comedy and contains elements that could be seen as farcical, this kind of comedy had precursors.'

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Recent events

Professor Greg Woolf, the University of St. Andrews
Why were the Gauls so big?
Tuesday 6 October, 4pm
The paper will look at how ethnographies were generated as Roman power extended over the west, how stereotypes emerged and what the consequences are for our use of the relevant texts.

Professor Richard Hunter, University of Cambridge
Demodocus and the Song of Ares and Aphrodite
Wednesday 14 October, 5pm

Wondrous Antiquities: The Histories of Herodotus

Nicholson Museum Course in a Day
Saturday, 12 September 2009

10am to 4.30pm, Nicholson Museum,
Quadrangle, University of Sydney

Five lectures from leading University of Sydney scholars; Alastair Blanshard, Julia Kindt, Frances Muecke, Hyun Jin Kim and Michael Turner. The aim is to give a better understanding of the extraordinary work that is the Histories of Herodotus. The day will include a showing of one of the best known Herodotus moments in modern culture – the Gyges/Candaules passage from the film The English Patient.

Download the program