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06/20 - 22: Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values XII: Meanings and Values of the Sacred in Greco-Roman Antiquity

Tuesday, June 20, 2023 - 2:30pm to Thursday, June 22, 2023 - 4:00pm

Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, Kislak Center
Van Pelt Library, 6th Floor
University of Pennsylvania

The Conference is free and open to the Public. No registration required. The Conference will be held live and in person.

Please bring a photo ID with you to enter the library.
                                            
Day 1 (20/06)

14.30         Registration
15.00 – 15.30     Introduction (Irene Polinskaya, Jeremy McInerney, Kim Beerden)

Session 1     Approaches and Categories (chair Richard Martin)
15.30 – 16.00     Saskia Peels / Degrees of sacrality in vocabulary of the sacred
16.00 – 16.30     Andrej Petrovic & Ivana Petrovic / Categories of Sacred in Greek Ritual Norms
16.30 – 17.00     Irene Polinskaya / Marking Sacrality, or What is not Sacred in a Greek Sanctuary?
17.00 – 17.30     Roundtable discussion (chairs Richard Martin and Celia Schultz)

17.30         Penn/Leiden: Twenty Years of Collaboration – 
                    Book presentation and reception
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Day 2 (21/06)

Session 2     Discourses (chair Jeremy McInerney)
10.00 – 10.30    Radcliffe G. Edmonds III / What is Sacred about a Hieros Logos?
10.30 – 11.00    Grace Ledbetter / Plato’s Theory of the Sacred
11.00 – 11.30    Fred Naiden / Rituals and “the Sacred”: To hieron and ta hiera 

11.30 – 11.45     Coffee break

Session 3     Ritual (chair Kim Beerden)
11.45 – 12.15     Efstathia Dionysopoulou / The ‘Sacred’ in the Graeco-Roman Egypt: A Survey on Semantics and Practices
12.15 – 12.45     Celia Schultz / Disentangling ritual and the Sacred: sacrificium and kashrut

12.45 – 14.00    Lunch break

Session 4     Action (chair Irene Polinskaya)
14.00 – 14.30     Cynthia Bruhn / Elements of ‘the Sacred’ in the ancient Greek supplication ritual
14.30 – 15.00    Richard Martin / Fighting the Sacred: makhomai, paleuo and Ritual Action in Ancient Greece
15.00 – 15.30     Beatriz Pañeda Murcia / Manufacturing the divinity of rulers in Hellenistic and Roman Delos

15.30 – 16.00     Coffee break

Session 5     Priests and Priestesses (chair Fred Naiden)
16.00 – 16.30    Catherine M. Keesling / Greek Priestesses: The Gender Principle and Greek Exceptionalism
16.30 – 17.00     Alex Antoniou / Re-asserting the ‘sacred’ for Roman priesthoods

19.00-21.00    Conference dinner 
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Day 3 (22/06)

Session 6     Space (chair Catherine Keesling)
10.15 – 10.45     Cloe Curcio / The Sacred at the Border. Towards the Definition of a Liminal Landscape in Argolid, from Mycenaean to Hellenistic Times
10.45 – 11.15     Zsuzsa Várhelyi / ‘There is no spring which is not sacred:’ healing waters in the Roman empire 
11.15 – 11.45     Kyle Mahoney / Theogonies, Sacred Mountains, and Arcadian Ethnogenesis

11. 45 – 13.00    Lunch break

Session 7     Stories of Place and Space (chair Rad Edmonds)
13.00 – 13.30     Patricia Kret / Encircling the Sacred? Creating sacred space with Graeco-Roman amulets
13.30 – 14.00     Natasha Ferreira / Sacred cities in Euripides’ Trojan Women: Troy and Athens
14.00 – 14.30     Ineke Sluiter and Miguel John Versluys / Meditations on a small ugly sacred bronze horse (Pausanias 5, 27, 2-4)

Session 8:     Conclusion
14.30 – 15.30     Roundtable discussion (chair Ineke Sluiter)
15.30 – 16.00     Closing remarks, and looking ahead to the conference volume (practicalities) 
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Participants:
Alex Antoniou (University of Oxford)
Kim Beerden (Leiden University)
Cynthia Bruhn (Humboldt University)                                 
Cloe Curcio (University of Rome "Tor Vergata”)
Efstathia Dionysopoulou (Leiden University)
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III (Bryn Mawr College)                    
Natasha Ferreira (Stellenbosch University)
Catherine M. Keesling (Georgetown University)
Patricia Kret (Leiden University)
Grace Ledbetter (Swarthore College)
Kyle Mahoney (Swarthmore College)
Richard Martin (Stanford University)
Jeremy McInerney (University of Pennsylvania)
Fred Naiden (UNC, Chapel Hill)
Beatriz Pañeda Murcia (Lund University)
Saskia Peels (Groningen University)
Andrej Petrovic (University of Virginia)
Ivana Petrovic (University of Virginia)
Irene Polinskaya (King’s College London)
Celia Schultz (University of Michigan)
Ineke Sluiter (Leiden University)
Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Boston University)
Miguel John Versluys (Leiden University)

For further information contact:
Sarah Gish-Kraus
Dept of Classical Studies
University of Pennsylvania
201 Cohen Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304
voice: (215) 898-7425