Seminars

  • Founded
    1957
  • Seminar Number
    441

This seminar exists to further, in the New York area, the study of the literature, art, archaeology, and history of the ancient world. Seven meetings are held each year attended by twenty to sixty members drawn from universities and colleges within reach of New York. There is no set theme to the seminar for a given semester or year.


Co-Chairs
Marcus Folch
mf2664@columbia.edu

Joel Lidov
jbl104@caa.columbia.edu

Rapporteur
Jose Antonio Cancino Alfaro
jc5502@columbia.edu

Meeting Schedule

09/21/2023 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:30 PM
Declamatory Fictions and the Crimen Maiestatis - Seneca, Controversiae 9.2
Matthew Leigh, University of Oxford
Abstract

Abstract

In 184 B.C. the censors M. Porcius Cato and L. Valerius Flaccus expelled from the senate seven of its members, of whom the most famous was L. Quinctius Flamininus. The accusation against Flamininus was that, while serving as consul for the year 192 B.C. and campaigning in the province of Gaul, he personally slew with a sword a Boian deserter who had reached his quarters while he was in his cups. This he did to compensate his prostitute lover Philippus who had quit Rome with him just before the gladiatorial games and complained to Flamininus that he had missed the entertainment. Livy 39.42-43 records this episode and cites the principal sources for subsequent versions of the story. In Controversiae 9.2, Flamininus stands trial under the statute 'maiestatis laesae sit actio'. This paper asks the following questions of the Senecan exercise: (i) Is there any historical basis for an actual trial of Flamininus under the lex maiestatis? (ii) What does it mean for declaimers operating at different points in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius to try the case by application of the crimen maiestatis? (iii) What perspective on the different iterations of this exercise and on those credited with contributing to it is offered to Seneca as he gathers together his material at the very end of the reign of Tiberius and published it at the start of that of Gaius?





10/26/2023 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:30 PM
TBD
Rosa Andújar, King's College London




11/16/2023 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:30 PM
TBD
Alexander Forte, Massachusetts Institute of Technology




01/18/2024 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:30 PM
TBD
Elizabeth Carney, Clemson University




02/15/2024 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:30 PM
TBD
Sailakshmi Ramgopal, Columbia University




03/21/2024 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:30 PM
TBD
Tom Hawkins, Ohio State University




04/18/2024 Faculty House, Columbia University
7:30 PM
TBD
Christina Kraus, Yale University