Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

• Athens, 403 BC: A Choral History

  Vincent Azoulay and Paulin Ismard join me in the Lesche to discuss their study of the restoration of democracy in Athens in 403 BC, in which they examine the Athenian civil war through the prism of chorality. A translation of their 2020 book Athènes 403: une histoire chorale (Flammarion, Paris) has just appeared in an English translation by Lorna Coing with the title Athens, 403 BC: A Democracy in Crisis? (Cambridge University Press).Ancient sourcesAristophanes, FrogsAristotle, Politics Book 3Fragments of poetry by Critias (accessible in Brill’s New Jacoby: 338a; see also this Oxford bibliography)IG II2 10, Honors for foriegners who had supported the democracy against the Thirty (401/0). Online hereXenophon, Hellenica, esp. 2.4.20-22 (speech of Cleocritus)Also mentionedAnderson, Greg (2018) The Realness of Things Past: Ancient Greece and Ontological History. Oxford University Press.Keesling, Catherine M. (2012) "Syeris, Diakonos of the Priestess Lysimache on the Athenian Acropolis (IG II2 3464)," Hesperia 81: 467-505.Loraux, N. (1997) La cité divisée : l'oubli dans la mémoire d'Athènes. Payot: Paris. Translated by Corinne Pache and Jeff Fort as The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens. Zone/Princeton University Press 2002/2006.About our guestsVincent Azoulay is Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He is a former member of the Institut Universitaire de France and the current director of the international bilingual journal Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. He has been awarded several prizes, including the Prix du Sénat du Livre d'Histoire (2011). He is the author of several books already translated into English: Pericles of Athens (2014), The Tyrant-Slayers of Ancient Athens (2017) and Xenophon and the Graces of Power (2018).Paulin Ismard is Professor of Ancient History at Aix-Marseille University. His work focuses on the history of democracy in antiquity and the history of slavery in a comparative perspective. His publications include L'événement Socrate (Flammarion, 2013), Democracy’s Slaves (Harvard, 2017), La cité et ses esclaves. Institution, fictions, expériences (Seuil, 2019), Le miroir d'Œdipe (Seuil 2023), and, with Vincent Azoulay, Athens, 403 BC. A Democracy in Crisis? (Cambridge University Press, 2025).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

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  57:20
• Isis Worship in the Greek East

  Lindsey Mazurek joins me in the Lesche to discuss Isis worship during the Roman Empire, and how it intersected with and contributed to constructions of Greek identity.Ancient textsApuleius, Metamorphoses (esp. Book 11)Plutarch, Isis and OsirisAlso mentionedBarrett, Caitlin E. (2019) Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens. Oxford.Bricault, Laurent (2005) Recueil des inscriptions concernant les cultes isiaques I-III. Paris.Brubaker, Rogers (2006) Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge, Mass.Eshleman, Kendra (2012) The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire: Sophists, Philosophers, and Christians. Cambridge. Moyer, Ian (2011) Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism. Cambridge. Vasunia, Phiroze (2001) The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander. Berkeley. Parker, Grant. (2008) The Making of Roman India. Cambridge.Walters, Elizabeth J. (1988) Attic Grave Reliefs That Represent Women in the Dress of Isis. Hesperia Supplement 22.Whitmarsh, Tim (2001) Greek Literature and the Roman Empire. Oxford.About our guestLindsey Mazurek is an assistant professor in the Department of Classical Studies at Indiana University. Her research focuses on the intersections of ethnicity, religion, migration, and material culture in the Roman provinces, particularly Greece. She is the author of Isis in a Global Empire: Greek Identity Through Egyptian Religion in Roman Greece, which was published with Cambridge University Press in 2022. She also co-directs the Mediterranean Connectivity Initiative, a digital history and archaeology project that examines social ties in Rome's port cities. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Archaeology, Hesperia, and the Memoirs of the American Academy at Rome.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

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  1:02:25
• SPECIAL: Classicism & Chronopolitics: Sasha-Mae Eccleston's EPIC EVENTS

  Sasha-Mae Eccleston joins me in the Lesche to discuss classicizing and chronopolitics in the contemporary United States. And yes, we talk about that Virgil quotation.Ancient textsHomer, Iliad Euripides & Seneca, MedeaVirgil, Aeneid 9.447 (nulla dies umquam memori uos eximet aeuo)Also mentioned (selection)Modern creative worksEric Fischl, "Tumbling Woman" (2001) (sculpture)Ben Lerner, Angle of Yaw (2006)Adrienne Rich, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems, 2007-2010 (2011), esp. "Reading the Iliad as if it were the first time" and "Don't flinch"Juliana Spahr, The Connection between Everything with Lungs: Poems (2005)Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016)Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones (2011)Op/edsCaroline Alexander, "Out of Context," New York Times, April 6, 2011.Tom Brokaw, "Two Dates Which Will Live in Infamy," San Diego Union-Tribune, December 7, 2001.Academic worksScholarship in Temporality Studies by Elizabeth Freeman and Sarah Sharma.Greenwood, Emily. "Reception Studies: The Cultural Mobility of Classics," Daedalus 145.2 (2016): 41-9.Haley, Shelley P. "Self-Definition, Community, and Resistance: Euripides' 'Medea' and Toni Morrison's 'Beloved'," Thamyris 2.2 (1995): 177-206.Van Schepen, Randall. "Falling/Failing 9/11: Eric Fischl's Tumbling Woman Debacle," Aurora: The Journal of the History of ART 9 (2008): 116-43.Wright, Matthew. "Making Medea Medea." In Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy, ed. P. J. Finglass and Lyndasy Coo, 216-243. Cambridge 2020.About our guestSasha-Mae Eccleston is currently the John Rowe Workman Assistant Professor of Classics where she is affiliated with the Initiative for Environmental Humanities, the Department of comparative literature, and the Department of Africana studies. She  directs the fellowship in critical classical studies for PhDs and/or MFAs. She is cofounder of the scholarly society Eos and of Racing the Classics, a field-wide initiative for early career researchers and doctoral candidates in Classics.________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

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  1:06:56
• The Case for Global Ancient History

  Buckle your seatbelt and prepare to clutch your pearls! Walter Scheidel joins me in the Lesche to discuss his case for globalizing the study of ancient history -- and for killing off Classics as we know it. Scheidel is the author of What is Ancient History?, a new manifesto published by Princeton University Press.MentionedSheldon Pollock, "Future Philology? The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 35, No. 4, The Fate of Disciplines, edd. James Chandler and Arnold I. Davidson (Summer 2009), pp. 931-961The Herodotus HelplineEidolon articles about reshaping the field of ClassicsAbout our guestWalter Scheidel is Dickason Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University. His research ranges from ancient social and economic history and premodern historical demography to the comparative and transdisciplinary world history of inequality, state formation, and human welfare. He has written, edited and co-edited some 21 books and published more than 260 papers and reviews. His latest book, What is Ancient History, is out now with Princeton University Press. ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

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  1:02:46
• Herodotus and the Presocratics

  Scarlett Kingsley joins me in the Lesche to discuss Herodotus' place in the intellectual milieu of the fifth century, the subject of her book Herodotus and the Presocratics: Inquiry and Intellectual Culture in the Fifth Century BCE.If you enjoy this episode, you might also like Episode 11 on The Sophists, with Josh Billings and Christopher Moore.Ancient textsHerodotus, Histories (especially the meeting between Solon and Croesus at 1.30-33, and the Constitutional Debate set in Persia at 3.80-82)Aristophanes, CloudsEuripides, PhoenissaeThucydides, History of the Peloponnesian WarHippias, Synagoge (non-extant)Dissoi logoiScattered references to many fifth-century thinkersAlso mentionedDewald, C. (1987) "Narrative Surface and Authorial Voice in Herodotus' Histories," Arethusa 20: 147-68.Diels, H. and W. Kranz (1951-52), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, griechisch und deutsch (6 vols.). Berlin.Laks, A. and G. Most (2016), Early Greek Philosophy (9 vols.). Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA and London. Carolyn Miller's work on genreNestle, W. (1908) Herodots Verhältnis zur Philosophie und Sophistik. Stuttgart.Thomas, R. (2002) Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion. Cambridge.About our guestScarlett Kingsley is an Associate Professor of Classics at Agnes Scott College. Her research explores the intersections of early Greek historiography and philosophy, with a particular focus on Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Presocratics. Her first monograph, Herodotus and the Presocratics: Inquiry and Intellectual Culture in the Fifth Century, was supported by a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship. She is also the co-editor, with G. Monti and T. Rood, of The Authoritative Historian: Tradition and Innovation in Ancient Historiography (CUP, 2022). She is currently co-writing a book with Tim Rood entitled Land, Wealth, and Empire in Herodotus: Reading the End of the Histories (forthcoming, OUP).________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: leschepodcast@gmail.comSuggest a book using this form

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  1:00:43

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