Archaia, the Yale Program for the Study of Global Antiquity, offers grants to graduate students in support of projects to be taken up in the summer. All Yale graduate students are eligible to apply; preference will be given to proposals from doctoral students in the pre-candidacy stage and to students in master’s programs who will be continuing their studies at Yale beyond the current term. Past projects have ranged from close intertextual readings of Egyptian papyri to a study of Gandharan schist palettes in the context of Mediterranean Hercules cults. Read about three projects from previous summers here.
THOMAS MUNRO travelled to Paris to attend a conference, “New Perspectives on Suetonius”, held at Paris Nanterre University earlier this summer. This was the first conference held on the famous ancient biographer since 2008 and brought scholars from across the world to discuss the latest advances in Suetonian scholarship. “Suetonius is best known for De Vita Caesarum, a set of biographies of the first twelve Roman emperors. My paper focused on the lesser-studied De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus (DGR), the sole surviving complete section of a much larger project, De Viris Illustribus (DVI). The work provides a series of short biographies of teachers of grammar and rhetoric, along with commentary on the development of these two fields at Rome from the mid-2nd century BC until Suetonius’ own times (c. 100 AD). Although similar collections of biographies existed before DVI, this was the first time that anyone had written biographies of scholars working in these fields. The work has challenged modern scholars. In addition to its “mundane” content, it also suffers from inconsistent citations, the lack of a coherent narrative, and a corrupt textual tradition. Even the leading expert on the collection, Bob Kaster, has described it as “a very imperfect work of scholarship”
Mounting a defence of the collection’s virtues, I argue that much of what frustrates modern scholars can be ascribed to the novelty of Suetonius’ project in the collection and a desire to find a teleological narrative uniting the lives. If viewed, instead, as an attempt to map the intellectual networks of the late Republic and early Empire, DGR is a successful and imaginative work of scholarship. I focused on the networks implied by details of rivalries and friendships, shared objects of study, and finally the political affiliations of the grammarians discussed. In short, Suetonius’ interest in where the lives of his subjects intersected allowed him to observe subtle connections and generate meaningful networks more effectively than artificially constructing an explicit intellectual tradition.
I was very grateful for the opportunity provided by ARCHAIA to meet other scholars interested in the biographer’s work and to expand my research into Latin literature in a new direction (especially as I finish up my dissertation). The conference proceedings are already in progress and should appear some time in 2027”.
CATHERINE SATERSON “With funding from ARCHAIA, I was able to travel to Germany and Greece to study Ancient Greek curse tablets, ritual objects and texts which are central to my research but which I had yet to study in person prior to this trip. Doing so has been invaluable. In Berlin, I visited the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, home of Inscriptiones Graecae, where I met with scholar Jaime Curbera to discuss his work on Attic curses. In Athens and Corinth, I worked with tablets in the collections of the National Archaeological Museum and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. My time in Corinth overlapped with research visits by Dr. Curbera and Professors Jessica Lamont and Laura Nasrallah. It was an incredible privilege to be in conversation with these scholars as I worked to hone my epigraphic skills and I am very grateful to ARCHAIA for helping to make this happen.”
