The Ages of Nero: Reality and Reception
19th Trends in Classics
May 22-24, 2025
The Department of Classical Studies at Duke University, the Classics Department at Oberlin College & Conservatory and the Department of Classics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki are organizing the 19th Trends in Classics International Conference (an in-person event) to be held in Thessaloniki from May 22 to 24, 2025 at KEDEA, Aristotle University Campus (http://kedea.rc.auth.gr). The topic of the conference is:
“The Ages of Nero: Reality and Reception”
https://lit.auth.gr/research/conferences/trends-in-classics/19th_trends
(Nero and his age continue to fascinate us. The past decade alone has seen two Companions, three major museum exhibitions, new excavations of the Domus Aurea, and several biographies that aim to shed new light on Rome’s notorious fifth emperor and the years 54-68 CE. It is also clear that the Age of Nero lived on well after the death of the man himself. In the centuries since his suicide in 68 CE, different groups of people have refashioned their own ideas of Nero or their own idea of the Age of Nero, from the Flavian reshaping of his memory and the Christian creation of the Nero Antichrist legend to the influence of Neronian authors on early modern poetics, the reclaiming of Nero in the late 19th century as a symbol of decadent masculinity, and Hollywood’s use of Nero as symbol of its own spectacular power.
Perhaps it is time that we speak of Ages of Nero in the plural. This international conference brings together scholars from different academic disciplines to explore such Ages of Nero including the literature, philosophy, art and architecture of Nero’s principate as well as the reception of Nero and Neronian culture from antiquity to today.)
Program
Thursday, May 22, 2025
13.00 – 15.00
Walking tour of Thessaloniki
16.00 – 16.30
Registration and Greetings
Ioanna Karamanou (Aristotle University) & Antonios Rengakos (Aristotle
University & Academy of Athens)
Lauren Ginsberg (Duke University) & Christopher Trinacty (Oberlin)
16.30 – 18.30
Panel 1: Neronian Artistry, Neronian Aesthetics
Presider: Lauren Ginsberg
Eric Varner (Emory University): Going Beyond Greece: Nero’s Globalizing Artistic
Agenda
Rebecca Moorman (University of Boston): Petronian Gimmicks in the Age of Nero
Kate Meng Brassel (University of Pennsylvania): Persius as anti-Nero
Stefano Rebeggiani (USC): Horror ac divina voluptas: Statius Reading Nero and his
Contemporaries
18.30 - 20:00 Wine Reception
Friday, May 23, 2025
10.00 – 11.30
Panel 2: Seneca Across the Ages of Nero
Presider: Timothy Joseph
Christopher Star (Middlebury College): Fate and Free Will: Seneca the Prophet
George Pilotis (Cambridge University): Reflections of Seneca: Intertext and Politics
in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria
Christopher Trinacty (Oberlin College): Seneca’s Epistulae ad Lucanum: John
Hersey’s The Conspiracy
11.30 - 12.00 Coffee Break
12.00 – 13.30
Panel 3: Neronian Dramas
Presider: Christopher Trinacty
George W. M. Harrison (Carleton University): Hercules on the Roman Stage:
Seneca’s Hercules furens and the Anonymous Hercules on Oeta
Robert Cowan (University of Sydney): Did the Earth Move? Incest, Matricide, and
Ecofeminism in the Ages of Nero
Stavros Frangoulidis (Aristotle University): Pseudo-Seneca, Octavia: Narratives of
Nero
13.30-14.30 Lunch
14.30 – 16.30
Panel 4: Revisiting Neronian Encomia and Responses
Presider: Robert Cowan
Timothy Joseph (College of the Holy Cross): Lucan’s Muse: The Consistency of the
Addresses to Nero / Caesar in the Pharsalia
Evangelos Karakasis (Aristotle University): The Second Einsiedeln Eclogue
Revisited: A Case of Neronian Propaganda
Evan Jewell (Rutgers University): Not that “Chill and Mature Terrorist”: Nero
iuvenis and Augustus puer
Lisa Cordes (Humboldt University) in collaboration with Elisabetta M. Gamba
(Humboldt University): Poppaea’s Apotheosis (P. Oxy. LXXVII. 5105) and the
Neronian Imperial Discourse
16:30 - 17:00 Coffee Break
17:00 – 18.00
Panel 5: Reflections of the Late Antique Nero
Presider: Shushma Malik
Julia Nations-Quiroz (Yale University): Narrative of Oppression: Nero’s
Representation on a Late Antique Sarcophagus
Eleni Manolaraki (University of South Florida): Nero in the Suda
Trip to Museum of Byzantine Culture
Saturday May 24, 2025
10.00 – 11.30
Panel 6: Nero on the Early Modern Stage
Presider: Ginna Closs
Emma Buckley (St. Andrews University): Re-inventing the Tyrant: Nero in Early
Modern England
Caroline Engelmeyer (Harvard University): “As at Atreus’ Feast”: Thyestean
Eclipses and Senecan Anachronism in Jonson’s Catiline
Curtis Perry (University of Illinois): The “Soul of Nero” and the Womb of
Agrippina in English Renaissance Drama
11.30 – 12.00 Coffee Break
12.00 – 13.30
Panel 7: Nero on the Modern (Operatic) Stage and Screen
Presider: Christopher Star
Wendy Heller (Princeton University): “Otton, torna in te stesso”: Otho, Nero, and
Masculinity on the Venetian Stage
Maria Wyke (University College London): Nero in the Early Years of Cinema
13.30 – 14.30 Lunch
14.30 – 16.00
Panel 8: Nero in Modern Popular Print Media
Presider: Emma Buckley
Shushma Malik (Cambridge University): Nero in an Age of Caricature, or Caricature
in an Age of Nero
Ginna Closs (University of Massachusetts): True Comics, Fake News, and Nero’s
Urban Renewal Agenda
Lauren Ginsberg (Duke University): Mad Man: Nero in 20th- Century Print
Advertising
16.00 - 16.30
Closing Remarks
20.00 Conference Dinner
Organizing Committee:
Lauren Donovan Ginsberg (Duke University)
Christopher Trinacty (Oberlin College & Conservatory)
Antonios Rengakos (Aristotle University & Academy of Athens)
Stavros Frangoulidis (Aristotle University)
The organizers gratefully acknowledge the kind support of Duke University-Department of Classics, Oberlin College and Conservatory-Classics Department, Aristotle University Research Committee, Kostas & Eleni Ounari Foundation-Academy of Athens and the University Studio Press.