Gratuitous bonus post; last night we had neighbours round for a pre-New Year’s Eve event, and I was tasked with putting together a quiz. Having put in the work, I thought I might as well share it, in case anyone out there is desperately searching for precisely this sort of thing for this evening… (more…)
Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
Quiz of the Year 2022
Posted in Events on December 31, 2022| Leave a Comment »
The Melian Dialogues
Posted in Events, Research in Progress, tagged classical reception, Melian Dialogue, politics, theatre, Thucydides on January 10, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Do What You Must
Posted in Events, Research in Progress, tagged Impact, Melian Dialogue, theatre, Thucydides on October 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I have sometimes reflected that my epitaph should probably be ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’ – especially when, as seems all too likely, I perish from a surfeit of missed deadlines. What I’ve always thought of as a boundless intellectual curiosity, able to get excited by and imagine my own contribution to any number of different projects, could equally well be described as a butterfly mind or a puppy-like lack of discrimination, randomly chasing cars and shiny things. The net result is the same, an excessive ‘to do’ list and regular bursts of apology-writing when the time and energy just run out.
Which isn’t to say that the original ideas weren’t good (more…)
Lawful Neutral
Posted in Events, Musings, Research in Progress, tagged classical reception, Impact, Melian Dialogue, politics, Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson on June 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I’ve just discovered this blog post lurking in my ‘Drafts’ file, having apparently been created in mid-March; I can’t remember why I never got round to finishing it – unlike another post I started back in the autumn, which perhaps needs to wait for an appropriate moment – but that’s probably revealing in itself. Anyway, in a number of ways this unfinished discussion connects to what I was planning to write this morning, so I’ll post it here and then add current thoughts underneath…
If what you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If what you have is a copy of Thucydides, everything looks like the Melian Dialogue. (more…)
Lessons of War?
Posted in Events, Musings, tagged classical reception, Melian Dialogue, Thucydides, Thucydides trap on May 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »
What’s the key lesson of the Melian Dialogue? The dominant tradition has been some sort of variant on Crude Realism, from the perspective of the would-be superior power: justice only between equals, we the strong have the right to dictate and you the weak must comply, and forget all this nonsense about hope. The usual response, from those who reject such a worldview and/or, perhaps more significantly, aren’t in any position to pursue it, is to question and reject the Athenian logic, by detaching it from the authority of Thucydides and pointing to the consequences of their attitude. But of course it is also possible to be one of the Weak and nevertheless accept the logic of the Strong; like the prisoner in Life of Brian who praises the Romans for their strict approach to crime and punishment, or the cow at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, there are those who fully accept the right of others to dictate terms and exact obedience. (more…)
Welcome to Tomorrow (?)
Posted in Events, Musings, tagged Berlin, capital, conferences, ESSHC, technology on April 15, 2018| 1 Comment »
Never mind the hover board, what I was really expecting by 2018 was that we’d all be projecting ourselves into overseas conferences as holograms. Sorry, Belfast, but while I did find some quite nice beer, I still would have preferred to experience the round table discussion of Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveler and other delights of this year’s European Social Science History Conference without all the rain… (more…)
He’s Back
Posted in Events, Musings, Publications, tagged international relations, John Bolton, Thucydides on March 24, 2018| 1 Comment »
Ever since the days of Thucydides, states have used force to get what they want, and have expected weaker states to comply with their wishes. Ever since the days of Thucydides, they have claimed that this is all perfectly justifiable as the way of the world. Ever since the days of Thucydides, men have made confident claims that war is easy, straightforward, risk-free, simply an opportunity to demonstrate one’s greatness and reorder the world in a more congenial manner. Ever since the days of Thucydides, international relations academics and military strategists have spouted cliches like “Ever since the days of Thucydides…” as a cheap source of borrowed authority and gravitas. I just don’t get the part where this is supposed to be reassuring, even if it is delivered by a chiselled jaw and Action Man stare. (more…)
Must Try Harder
Posted in Events, Research in Progress, tagged ancient economy, capitalism, diversity, Thomas Piketty on March 17, 2018| Leave a Comment »
If ever there was a good week to smuggle out an announcement of a conference with a few diversity issues, it’s this week; unless you have Jordan Peterson and Steve Bannon as keynotes and put on a minstrel show as part of the evening entertainment, there’s no way you could look worse than the Stanford Sausage Fest.
But having more female speakers than none is hardly cause for self-congratulation; 25%, as we have for our forthcoming workshop in Berlin at the beginning of next month on Thomas Piketty and Capital in Classical Antiquity, really isn’t great. I’m writing this partly to acknowledge the problem and accept responsibility for it, and partly – more importantly – to emphasise the lesson: having a diverse range of speakers as one of your goals in putting together a conference programme, and taking various steps to try to ensure it, may still not be nearly enough. (more…)
Debt to Society
Posted in Events, tagged ancient economy, david graeber, debt, EU Referendum, politics on June 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I spent the weekend in Tübingen at a conference organised by John Weisweiler on Debt: the first 3500 years, exploring different aspects of the ideas presented by David Graeber in Debt: the first 5000 years within ancient contexts, from early Babylonia to the early Islamic period; programme can be downloaded here, or follow my attempts at pithy summary on Twitter under #Debt3500. My initial reaction to the idea was that it’s amazing no one had thought of doing this before. It’s not just that Graeber’s book offers some provocative ideas about the roles of debt and money in shaping human relationships (above all, different forms of dependence) that seem well worth exploring in the context of antiquity, but also that the periods we ancient historians are concerned with play a significant role in his overall schema of historical development – this is the Axial Age, in the phrase he borrows from Karl Jaspers, where world-changing intellectual developments went hand in hand with far-reaching economic and social changes, with dramatic implications for everything that then followed up to the slow-motion car crash of contemporary capitalism. (more…)
Sphinx 