The workshop is part of a multi-year research project supported by the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften and directed by Prof. Bernhard Zimmermann. The goal of the project, which has been underway at the Albert Ludwigs University since January 1, 2011, is to produce commentaries on all surviving fragments of Greek comedy.

Applications are open to all, but younger scholars (including graduate students) and other individuals interested in producing commentaries on individual comic poets are particularly encouraged to apply.

Further information on the project (which builds on the textual work of R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comic Graeci), and on its publications to date, is available at the homepage of the Seminar for Classical Philology: http://www.altphil.uni-freiburg.de/komfrag

The workshop will have two separate but related agenda.

Mornings (9-12 AM) will be occupied with a series of round-table style discussions of some of the challenges of commenting on fragmentary comedies. The first two sessions will be devoted to sample commentaries produced collectively by the participants, and will consider methodological and practical problems such as the use of parallels, argumentative structure, textual matters, handling of sources, citation practices, reconstruction of scenes and plays, and the like. More information will be provided with the application, but every participant in the conference will be expected to produce a sample commentary on 5–6 lines of Greek text. These samples will be due June 1, and will be combined and precirculated to all workshop participants. The final three morning sessions will be devoted to close discussion of substantial samples of draft commentaries produced by individual workshop participants. The precise number and arrangement of these sessions will depend on the number of samples submitted. These samples (25–30 double-spaced pages) will be due April 30, and will be similarly precirculated to all workshop participants. A final round-up session will be held on Saturday, 7 July.

Afternoons (3-7 PM) will be devoted to talks by recognized experts in the field on the general theme: “The Periodization and Dramatic Form of Greek Comedy”. The provisional schedule of afternoon talks is as follows:

Monday July 2:

• Bernhard Zimmermann (University of Freiburg) – “The Periodisation of Greek Comedy as Necessary – and Problematic.” (the talk will be in German)
• Eric Csapo (University of Sydney) – “The Earliest Phase of Ancient Greek Comedy.”

Tuesday July 3:

• Andreas Willi (University of Oxford, Worcester College) – “Epicharmos and Attic Comedy.”
• Jeffrey Henderson (Boston University) – “Pherecrates and Athenian Comedy between 450 and 420 BC.”
   

Wednesday July 4:

• Guiseppe Mastromarco (University of Bari) – “Euripidaristophanizein (Cratinus, fr. 342 K.-A.).” (the talk will be in Italian).
• Heinz-Günther Nesselrath (University of Göttingen) – “Periodisation of Ancient Greek Comedy in Hellenistic Philology.” (the talk will be in German)
   

Thursday July 5:

• Ioannis Konstantakos (University of Athens) – “Tendencies and Variety in Middle Comedy.”
• Benjamin Millis (University of Oxford) – “Comedy in- and outside of Athens in the 4th Century BC.”
• S. Douglas Olson (University of Minnesota / University of Freiburg) – “And on to Rome. Aristophanes and Athenaeus.” (Key-note lecture)
   

Friday July 6:

• Antonis Petridis (Open University of Cyprus) – “Before and after Menander.”
• Michael Scott Fontaine (Cornell University) – “From Athens to Rome: From Greek to Latin Comedy.”

Talks will last 45-50 min. and will be followed by a one-hour discussion period. Those interested in participating should submit proposals by March 30, 2012.

Proposals must include

1. a short CV (no more than one A4-page)
2. a statement of purpose (no more than 600 words) describing why you want to participate; if you have any previous experience working with fragmentary texts, ancient Greek Comedy or writing a commentary; and how you intend to use participation to advance your research.

Applicants who also wish to have their own work discussed in one of the morning sessions are invited to send a 20-pages sample of their work by April 30.

No participation fee for the workshop is required.

A presentation of the project “Kommentierung der Fragmente der griechischen Komödie” and a grand conference banquet will be held after the talks on the first day.
Various free-time activities (e.g. city tours of old Freiburg, hiking in the Black Forest, a guided visit to the Freiburg Cathedral, collective readings of aristophanic comedies) will be offered as part of the unofficial program.

The working languages for the conference and workshop will be English, German and Italian.

Due-dates:

• Applications for participation: March 30, 2012
• Sample commentary (on 5-6 lines of Greek text), that each participant has to submit as basis for the discussion in the first two morning sessions: June
  1, 2012
• Samples of draft commentaries (work in progress) to be discussed in the final three morning sessions:  April 30, 2012

For more information or to submit applications, please contact stylianos.chronopoulos@altphil.uni-freiburg.de

Her dissertation at UCLA was “The First Tribute Stele and the Athenian Empire, 455-445 B.C.,” 173 pp. It is unpublished but available from University Microfilms, under the name Valerie French Allen; she later gave up the name Allen and was known in her last decades by her maiden name, Valerie French. The official copy of the dissertation is held by the Department of History, UCLA. The work is a highly detailed study of the texts of the first ten of the Athenian tribute lists inscribed on the famous First Stele, or Lapis Primus, preserved in the Epigraphic Museum, Athens. The tribute lists constitute a document second only to Thucydides for our knowledge of fifth-century history. In this study French rigorously brought to bear her scientific training and proposed many important new readings and hypotheses. In measuring and reading the often worn and fragmentary letters she had the advice of Markellos Mitsos, the director of the EM, and of two of America’s preeminent epigraphists, Professors Ronald Stroud and Stephen Tracy. She drew attention to the need for multiple measurements of all ambiguous letters and preserved her many original readings in the notes to her discussion. The result is the only precise study of the texts of the tribute lists since the edition of the lists, known to all as ATL, by Meritt, Wade-Gery, and McGregor (Cambridge-Princeton, 1939-1953). Any future editor of the lists will inevitably have to use French’s work on the texts.

She submitted her manuscript to the University of California Press, which replied that it would not “publish all those numbers,” that is, her many records of measurements of the letters in her endnotes. Discouraged by this reply, she apparently lost interest in pursuing another publisher and turned to interests in other fields. Her publications in fifth-century classical studies are essentially limited to essays in Festschriften dedicated to Truesdell Brown, Donald Kagan, and Mortimer Chambers. The result is that her work on the Athenian empire has been all but totally overlooked. McGregor, who heard about it, requested from her a photocopy of her dissertation but seems to have made no use of it. It is briefly mentioned by Raphael Sealey in his A History of the Greek City States (Berkeley-Los Angeles 1976 etc., pp. 286, 296), in a discussion of W.K. Pritchett’s suggestion that a decorative relief, perhaps containing one list on its back, was mounted on the first stele above list 1. French (pp. 38-41) examined the surface at the top of the first stele and concluded that there was probably “a decorative relief which has been totally destroyed,” but she reserved judgment about whether this hypothetical relief also carried a list of a year’s tribute.

As one specimen of the originality and importance of her work, we may look at the first line of List 9 as numbered by ATL. This line is designated as a prescript by ATL (that is, it supposedly follows the usual formula at the head of a year’s record, “under the ninth board of treasurers, for which ... was secretary,” following which would come a list of cities that paid tribute. The reader will note, however, that only three Greek letters in the whole line are printed in ATL. The first is a dotted (that is, by epigraphic convention, uncertain) alpha, which ATL understands as the first letter of ἀ[ρχε̃ς], “board.” Eight letter-spaces farther on, ATL printed ἐν[άτες], “ninth,” in which both epsilon and nu are undotted, that is, considered certain by the editors.

Through repeated measurements of these supposed letters and the location of letters under them in the list of states paying tribute, specifically the name of the city Μενδα[ῖοι], French showed that the undotted epsilon and nu of ἐν[άτες] cannot be read and, more crucially, that the whole line is not, as ATL held,  the prescript heading the records of tribute for the year. She finally sketched and interpreted the preserved marks as rho, gamma, alpha, part of [Βε]ργα[ῖοι], a city in the Thraceward region; and the column in question contains only Thraceward names, thus “Bergaioi is the most likely restoration.”

French’s results support those of David Lewis, ABSA 49 (1954) 25-28, who with George Forrest had rejected the supposed alpha of ἀ[ρχε̃ς] as “no more than an accidental nick on a much-worn stone.” For Lewis, there was “a distinct possibility that the letters [sc. epsilon, nu of ATL’s ἐν[άτες] are not part of a prescript.” Lewis could not accept ATL’s ἐν[ and finallysaw “no alternative to the reading [Βερ]γ[αῖοι],” which was to be French’s final suggestion. Note, however, that she read rho, gamma, and a possible alpha, thus carrying the decipherment beyond Lewis. Her work on these letters, it will be seen, is not confined to rediscovering the name of one city, but requires a whole reconsideration of ATL’s list 9.

There is not enough space here to discuss the other critical subjects that French surveyed in her dissertation, such as ATL’s very adventurous opinion (barely accepted, reluctantly, by Meiggs-Lewis in their collection, p. 135) that in the year 449/8 the Athenians collected no tribute whatever and resumed collection in the next year. Rejecting this conclusion after detailed argument, French writes, “there is no ‘missing list,’ no year in which tribute was not collected” (p. 63). On all such topics French maintains her iron concentration and clear, vigorous prose;  and she provides data available nowhere else. Her work, based on a direct, hands-on study of the famous Lapis Primus, will surely some day receive the attention that it deserves.

Mortimer Chambers

James H. Tatum, Dartmouth College, has won the American Book Award for 2011 for his book African American Writers and Classical Tradition, Chicago, 2010, co-authored with William Cook.  The American Book Awards, established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation, recognize outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America's diverse literary community.

The application deadline is April 1, 2012.  For more information see http://mcl.as.uky.edu/conversational-latin-seminars-2012-english