Classics News and Events
New on the Material Musings blog
In November's Material Musings blog article, Sue Walker discusses an unusual enamelled statuette from the western Roman cemetery at Cirencester in an article titled: 'The Cirencester Cockerel'.
You can read it here.
New publication - An ash-chest in an English country-garden
New study of a Roman ash chest at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent.
New publication - Inscribing Flavian Rome: Epigraphic Strategies in Martial’s Epigrams by Alessandra Tafaro
Former PhD student at Warwick, Alessandra Tafaro is pleased to announce the publication of her monograph, derived from her PhD.
AI meets antiquity: Warwick ancient historian tests DeepMind’s transformative new model
Co-authoring a paper published in the world's leading multidisciplinary science journal Nature today, Alison Cooley, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick, has played a key verification role in developing the first artificial intelligence (AI) model for contextualising ancient inscriptions.
The Art of Veiled Speech, from Antiquity to Modern Times: 1st May 2025, 4pm
Subtexts are all around us. In conversation, business transactions, politics, literature, philosophy, and even love, the art of expressing more than what is explicitly said allows us to live and move in the world. But rarely do we reflect on this subterranean dimension of communication. Words don't just say what they say, and often we can understand (as listeners) and convey (as speakers) more, or something else entirely, than what is expressly said. Every day, we send out double-meaning messages and decipher those sent to us by others, without even taking notice. Greco-Roman rhetoric provides invaluable theoretical tools for thinking about this phenomenon, notably with the rhetorical notion of “figured speech”. History offers striking examples of the use of innuendo in ancient and modern political contexts. In personal and public life, veiled speech has many functions, including diplomatic, poetic, humorous and polemical. It also raises difficulties, as it carries the risk of misunderstanding. Criteria can therefore be proposed to remedy uncertainty and guarantee interpretation.