Events

The institute is pleased to announce the “Seleucid Study Day II”. Following the successful “Seleucid Study Day I” held at the University of Exeter in August 2011, the institute will host a research workshop on Wednesday November 9, 2011, in Hagey Hall 334, University of Waterloo.

Participation is free and guests are welcome, though they are kindly requested to contact Dr. Altay Coşkun in advance.

Arthur Eckstein: Polybius, the 'Treaty of Philinus', and the History of Roman Accusations Against Carthage

Barbara Borg: Exploring the Underground of Rome: The Roman Catacombs Reconsidered

The Ancient (and modern) Relationship Between Art and Text

Meagan Ayer: Traces in Stone: Refugees in the Epigraphic Record

Sylvian Fachard: Studying the borders of Attica. The Landscape of Athens' borderland in the Hellenistic Period

Following previous meetings at Exeter and Waterloo in 2011, the Seleucid Study Group met for a third time at the VIIth Celtic Conference of Classics which was hosted by Anton Powell (Classical Press of Wales) and Jean Yvonneau (Bordeaux) at the University of Bordeaux III. A particular Seleucid Panel allowed the continuation of the collaborative and interdisciplinary research agenda on one of the most under-explored world empires.

Greek and Roman foreign policy and diplomacy are among the best documented areas of these ancient societies and have from early on aroused the attention of modern scholars. A large part of our evidence consists of ancient interstate treaties that have been transmitted in the epigraphic and historiographical record. The sheer amount of such agreements (1000 examples are listed in BNP Suppl.

On February 14, 2013, a delegation from the Greek Consulate General at Toronto visited the Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies (WIHS). Friendly contacts had already been established in 2010, when the Hon. Consul General Dimitris Azemopoulos had been our guest of honour on occasion of the inauguration of the Institute. This time, Consul Despina Hatzidiakos, Director of Education, and Mr. Spyros Volonakis, Director of Education of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Church of Canada, followed our invitation to the University of Waterloo campus.

Over the past two decades, the study of royal women has been one of the most dynamic fields of inquiry into the Hellenistic world (ca. 336/323–30 BC), and one that has dramatically shifted our perceptions of gender, status, influence, and ability within the broader ancient world. While royal women were once dismissed as powerless pawns in a political game that was an exclusively masculine domain, it has become apparent that we cannot evaluate female power and roles exclusively by male criteria.