3rd Annual Research Workshop - Program and abstracts

Antiquity, reflected in its visible remnants scattered throughout Greece, served as a core political, legitimating argument in favor of the Greek liberation from the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent creation of the independent Greek State. Greece’s rich material cultural heritage was connected to politics from the onset; in effect, during the modern Greek State’s timeline, heritage was attributed to multiple and diverse values, a reality which impacted and still influences heritage administration in Greece. This presentation examines the different values that have been and are being linked to Greece's cultural heritage, focusing on selected moments of the country’s modern history. At the same time, it analyzes how changes in these values affect the ways of approaching, interpreting, and managing the material heritage vestiges located across the Greek territory.

The work of the archaeologists is hard. Its core is targeting, which entails the formulation of research questions that can be addressed to each context, the extraction and preservation of information, the synthesis of the extracted information into new meaningful narratives, after data analysis, and the communication of these results to society. Ultimately, the archaeologist is destined to bridge the Cartesian division of the branches of knowledge into “hard” sciences and humanities. This paper attempts to divide, into three broad categories, the main concerns of the archaeologist when called upon to approach a context and to formulate the methodology for dealing with it from scratch. In a juxtaposition of specialization with non-specialization, practices that are found almost equally in the field today, and the two speeds that are created, especially in the Greek reality, it is here proposed not to limit specialization. On the contrary, it is proposed to broaden the scope of archaeologists’ activities in order to incorporate the new analytical possibilities, not only practically but also conceptually.

My presentation examines the use of caves in the Greek Neolithic as part of a multi-dimensional agenda meant to satisfy both economic needs and spiritual concerns. However, while multi-dimensional, this agenda depended on specific temporal and contextual associations. For instance, using caves was not a priority during all Neolithic stages, and when it became widespread, it also became extensively variable across sites. So, in this sense, my first goal is to raise cautiousness for the “pattern of cave use” that was widely advocated by systemic theories and whose impact remains strong. Then I suggest placing Neolithic cave ritual practice under the prism of “the context of action,” revealing its range of dynamic and transformative features. Specifically, I examine the evidence of mortuary and non-mortuary ceremonies at indicative cave sites and how their specific aspects in terms of the landscape, the ways of human mobility, and the materiality of the practices altogether become intertwined in the identity of the ritual act and its social context. Looking at the phenomenon of historical religious cave shrines emerging at the other end of time, I argue that there was no real gap but transformations of these resilient Neolithic cave-ritual traditions which survived the following millennia.

The Hellenistic sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis, located on the south-eastern flank of Mount Ithome in Messene, and part of the finds from its excavation is the object of a research fellowship from Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies will be briefly presented. The finds from a sacred context like that of Artemis can constitute a group with specific meaning. And while individual votive offerings may be considered as indicative of personal expressions by the dedicants, a coherent and repeated set reflects a collective and recurring practice, made by groups of individuals in a period of time. In this case, the type of finds, including ceramic, terracottas, bronze and marble finds, may offer reliable and strong indications of the character and attributes of the worshipped deity but also information regarding the worshippers themselves and their motivation. The question of whether the finds from the excavation of the sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis highlight the character, the attributes of the deity, the gender, or even the age of the dedicants and the cult practices will be discussed.

As this toponymic epithet indicates, the origin and the most important sanctuary of Apollo Delios was located on the island of Delos. Beyond this link, however, the information regarding the characteristics of the cult is limited and vague. Through this presentation, I seek to approach, as much as possible, the essence of this cult and the way it was diffused in the wider Aegean area. These two matters constitute the main research objectives of my ongoing Ph.D. thesis. Furthermore, I will try to demonstrate the ways in which the presence of the cult of Apollo Delios can be established in various areas, outside the island of Delos, by examining various parameters. Apart from the existence of a sanctuary (the so-called Delion), the sending of theoroi from various cities to the sanctuary of Delos and their dedications to the main sanctuary of the god are also indicative of the importance of the cult in those cities. Utilizing, therefore, archaeological finds as well as epigraphical and literary sources, I will try to reveal those aspects of the cult, which contributed to its spread outside the sacred island.

For decades now, researchers have been challenging and exposing latent male bias in Classics and Greek archaeology, in terms of both primary textual sources and modern scholarship. Yet despite cogent, sometimes firebrand, deconstructions, and increasingly diverse voices, the dominance of male perspectives and distortive bias remains difficult to shake even nowadays. This presentation will consider persistent, more unconscious, biases in the evidence we select and privilege –and that we afford less weight to– when attempting to reconstruct ancient lived experiences through a gendered frame. Specifically, it explores the evidence from the houses at Geometric Zagora on Andros (1000-700 BC) to question the assumptions we make about women’s lives, alongside how we look for evidence of gendered spatial behavior in ancient Greek houses.

There was a common opinion in Ancient Greek literature that eros is associated with madness and disease. Euripides in Hippolytus gave particular attention to the combination between eros and madness presenting the strong erotic passion as a disease of mind and body that affects mental and physical operation. In the Platonic dialogue, the Phaedrus, the madness that relates to eros has a central role, as it is the way to the philosophical life, while the beneficial divine erotic madness is distinguished from the destructive human erotic madness. In Euripides, divine erotic madness is an instrument of punishment, while in Plato it is a divine gift and the best things come from there. To display erotic passion both Euripides and Plato use medical vocabulary related to emotional suffering and disease. This presentation will demonstrate the form that erotic madness takes in Hippolytus and Phaedrus and the symptomatology of eros as a bodily and mental disease aiming to bring us close to a better understanding of the transition from the tragic eros in Euripides to the philosophic eros in Plato.

The corpus of extant speeches shows that forensic stories are barometers of social concerns. In their speeches, litigants invest current anxieties and sensitivities about social and civic issues to gain a favorable hearing from their audiences, e.g. civic status, individuals’ polarization, and fear about the usurpation of Athenian identity. Hence, they develop their arguments having in mind the background of ideology and shared beliefs. Trials concerning civic issues reflected a dichotomy between those who either were or considered themselves part of the community and those who were excluded from it. This reinforced the distinction between inner-groups and out-groups. The speaker’s stances against a real or alleged usurper show the urgency to defend status, in a constant polarization between the self and the other, i.e. the insider and the outsider, the latter being the exact antithesis of the former. In this paper, I supplement my research conducted with CHS Greece with a new perspective. The starting point of my discussion is a particularly illustrative example that allows us to examine the ideological friction between the self and the other: the speech Against Aristogeiton I ([D.] 25). I shall illustrate how the speaker, through several instances and biographical narrative, invests in character assassination of the opponent for his social, cultural, and ideological “otherness”, with the intention to banish him from the body of citizens. Furthermore, a series of comparisons with other extant speeches would allow me to argue how widespread the disunity of the outsider was perceived by the community of insiders and thus discuss the ideological matrix of civic identity.

My talk will focus on a much-discussed episode of the Cyropaedia, the so-called “Panthea novella”. It is a story of conjugal love, but it has a tragic ending. In a nutshell: in order to express her gratitude to the Persian king for treating her with kindness, Panthea, an Assyrian prisoner of Cyrus, encourages her husband Abradatas to fight with Cyrus. Abradatas accepts but is killed in battle. Inconsolable, Panthea commits suicide. Various interpretations have been proposed for this novella: it has been considered a precursor to the novel; it has been interpreted as a praise of conjugal love; other scholars have also analyzed Cyrus as a model of prudence or as an object of (political) love. The new interpretation I propose is based on the structure of the novella: the story of Panthea is not presented as an autonomous narrative in one book but unfolds in four sections of the Cyropaedia (technique of entrelacement), spanning books 5, 6, and 7. In between, political events are interspersed. I argue that there is a correlation between the political events surrounding the Panthea story and the issues raised in the novella. Common themes are: the topic of conquest, the contrast between persuasion and violence, free will and grace (charis), and love (eros). These common themes illustrate that the boundaries between the private and public sphere are fluid and also give rise to further reflection on Cyrus and his stance as a leader. I conclude that the Cyropaedia is more a text that raises critical questions to provoke reflection than a textbook on proper political leadership or conduct.

The comedies of Menander, the most prominent author of Athenian New Comedy, were rediscovered in the 20th century due to some spectacular papyrological findings. The number of excellent commentaries on the best-preserved Menander comedies is ever-expanding, yet relatively little interpretative work and no full treatment of the smaller fragmentary plays of Menander have been published during the past four decades. The talk aims to stress the need for an up-to-date critical edition and commentary on these smaller fragments in light of recent papyrological and archaeological findings. It will present the ongoing work of two commentaries on Menandrian fragmentary plays, which deal with textual, linguistic, and pictorial evidence from 84 fragments while re-examining the papyri for new readings and incorporating the rich body of recent scholarship on New Comedy. Challenges pertaining to the analysis of fragmentary texts will be discussed, including textual obscurities and inaccuracies, interpretative problems, and speculative attributions of fragments to specific plays. The second part of the talk will deal with the theoretical (and practical) background of the concept of fragmentation in contemporary theater, examining different techniques and methods that can be utilized by contemporary directors to present fragments from ancient Greek comedy on the theater stage.

The Delphic festivals held in Delphi by Angelos Sikelianos and Eva Palmer-Sikelianos in 1927 and 1930 played an important role in the reuse of the mask in relation to antiquity. The aim of the Delphic Festivals was the establishment of a Delphic Amphictyony of ideological content. In the context of the Delphic Festivals, performances of ancient drama took place, where the actors’ masks and theatrical costumes were designed by Eva Palmer-Sikelianos, inspired by ancient classical iconography. The presentation will focus on: a) the use and evolution of the tragic mask in the ancient Greek and Roman theater, b) its reappearance in the Delphic Festivals after a long chronological gap, c) the redefinition of its use in contemporary performances of the revival of ancient drama.

The presentation will bring to the fore Plato’s impact on Capella’s adoption of a geoheliocentric model, and the Capellan system’s unwavering use of the distance-period relationship more than a millennium ahead of Copernicus, who eventually unraveled the universe’s configuration, thus fulfilling Plato’s aspiration. By using circumsolar orbits for the inner planets, Capella addressed Mercury’s and Venus’s anomalies that, on average, complete the ecliptic in a solar year, contradicting this principle at first sight. Capella utilized a rudimentary version of Kepler’s third law (T∝a) to determine the planets’ positions. On the other hand, the Copernican model adheres to a different form of the distance-period relationship now acknowledged as Kepler’s third law of planetary motion (T²∝a³), although Copernicus was unaware of it at that time. While Copernicus’ pioneering work in astronomy paved the way for remarkable progress in celestial mechanics, it is essential not to overlook Capella’s contribution. Capella’s geoheliocentric approach employed a basic form of the distance-period relationship and approximated the relative positions of the outer planets.

This presentation will explore the impact of early 19th-century Philhellenism on the shaping of modern Europe, especially in terms of state formation. It mostly studies Philhellenism as a liberal and radical movement, and state reactions to it before and during the Greek Revolution (c.1800-1830). The current research argues that just as Philhellenism itself was a transnational political movement, it also gave rise to equally transnational and interstate police measures. The main states, and their administrative practices studied, are Austria, the Italian states (Rome, Naples), Prussia, and France. Through the example of Philhellenism, this paper helps unfold the whole of repressive policies and, more broadly, crucial elements of state formation in Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic Europe.

Publishing the Greek American and Italian American lesbian memoirs is something of a rarity. The overall patriarchal context with its strict gender roles, the codes of honor and secrecy in both cultures as well as problems with marketability seem to be still holding strong. Among the very few published memoirs on female homosexuality within Greek Americana, Joanna Eleftheriou’s This Way Back (in Place) (2020), promoted as a collection of essays, unravels the author’s course toward self-definition as a queer ethnic and a devout Greek Orthodox while growing up between Cyprus and the States in the 1990s and 2000s. Annie Rachele Lanzillotto’s L is For Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir (2014) starting from the late 1960s records the author’s confrontations with domestic abuse and paternal war trauma, cancer, and heteronormativity as she works hard on the exploration of her artistic sides. This paper compares and contrasts the two works together to shed ample light on an area and experiences so rarely discussed within the two ethnic groups; their joint reading aspires to foreground the Mediterranean ethnic lesbian identity thus enriching the canon of gender and ethnic studies.