News and Events

Dr. Ute Wartenberg Kagan, President
American Numismatic Society
Olin Humanities, Room 102  5:00 pm – 6:15 pm EST/GMT-5
An introduction to Greek coinage and currency, designed for beginners in the field.  An opportunity to explore this most tangible of Greek art forms (and you will get to touch some examples!)

Prof. Del Maticic, Blegen Fellow in Greek and Roman Studies, Vassar College
Olin Humanities, Room 202  5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Metals are everywhere in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and they have been interpreted widely for their mythical, poetological, and historical significance. In this talk, I will suggest a more general theory about what metal means in Ovid's metamorphic world. In particular, I argue that Ovid returns again and again to metal's function as a connector and mediator. As monetary currencies, technologies of war, markers of temporal periodization, and medium through which gods mix with mortals, metals magnetize an ecology of relation around them in the world of the poem, conducting connectivities of all kinds. This force of metallic mixture is occasionally a source of positive outcomes for characters in the poem, but much more often is a force of deterioration and violence. In this way, metal's agential power in the Ovidian world is as something of an agent of Heraclitean strife, binding the world together in tension.

Rob Cioffi, Chuck Doran, and Jay Elliott
Stevenson Library 4th Floor Reading Room  1:30 pm – 2:30 pm EST/GMT-5
On the afternoon of August 24th, 79 CE, an unusual cloud in the shape of a pine tree could be seen across the Bay of Naples. As night turned to dawn on the morning of the 25th, Mt. Vesuvius was erupting with lethal force: buildings shook violently, the sea was absorbed back into itself, and black clouds rent by fire coursed through the sky. The eruption buried cities, killed tens of thousands, and terrified countless others. Yet, Vesuvius’ destruction was also, paradoxically, responsible for stunning acts of preservation. In Pompeii, the volcanic ash created a time capsule of Roman life in 79 CE, and in Herculaneum the deadly, hot gas preserved a whole library: nearly 1,000 ancient Greek and Latin book rolls that had been carbonized during the eruption. The only problem has been reading them. For 250 years scholars have tried to unravel the Herculaneum texts with varying degrees of success—and substantial loss of material. 

On the morning of February 5th, 2024 CE, all that changed. The Vesuvius Challenge announced three winners, who, thanks to advanced imaging technologies and artificial intelligence, have used a non-destructive process to read a significant portion of a new Herculaneum text. It is very likely by the epicurean philosopher Philodemus. Their discovery has the potential to change the landscape of Greek literature. It has already become major news and has featured in stories on NPR and in the Guardian. This informal seminar will present these findings to the Bard community, lay out their groundbreaking significance for anyone interested in Greek literature and ancient philosophy, and discuss their potential further applications.