Towards a more inclusive Classics

On June 25–26, 2020, Prof. Barbara Goff (Reading) and Dr Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis (St Andrews) held a (virtual) two-day workshop ‘Towards a more inclusive Classics‘, hosted by the Institute of Classical Studies, London.

We were delighted to be part of this event with our presentation ‘Democratising Roman Poetry’.

Traditionally, the way in which we study Roman poetry focuses on a canon of a dozen or two Roman authors, mostly writing in Latin, mostly datable to the two first centuries, and almost exclusively with a focus on the city of Rome: an astonishingly narrow and judicious selection for a cultural practice that existed for over 1,000 years in an empire that, in modern terms, spans at least four time zones and three continents, and whose population was diverse, multilingual, and multicultural in its composition. In my (proposed) presentation, I will offer a brief introduction to the wealth of evidence for the local production of verse in the Roman empire, across time and space, and, based on a small number of significant case studies, demonstrate its potential for a more meaningful approach to poetry and verse as expressions of a shared cultural practice rather than an exclusive pastime of the elite.

Here you can find our handout.