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This paper examines how the question of whether Eastern literature influenced the Greek novel has shaped the way scholars interpret the papyrus fragments of Greek prose fiction. When Erwin Rhode raised this question about the fully extant Greek novels in 1876, the stakes were the Hellenic “purity” of the genre and its value as a representative of Greek literature. As Whitmarsh (2011) has shown, Rohde’s answers were bound up in an orientalist perspective typical of the end of the nineteenth century.

This paper considers the reception of the Greek novels in seventeenth century France. I argue that a fervent wave of early modern fictional responses to the genre can illuminate new approaches to Heliodorus’s Aethiopica and new connections between it and the development of the novel in Western Europe.

Although recent work has begun to alter our perception of the late-antique and Byzantine reception of the imperial Greek novels, one holdover from the previous two centuries of scholarship is an enduring idea that early and Medieval Christian readers would have found the content of non-Christian prose fiction scandalous.

In the history of scholarship on Imperial Greece, Erwin Rohde’s 1876 Der griechische Roman is considered groundbreaking for two primary reasons: not only was it the first comprehensive scholarly treatment of the ancient Greek novel, but it also provided the first extensive account of the ‘Second Sophistic’, seen as the backdrop against which the novels should be understood.

The Res Gestae, famously dubbed by Theodor Mommsen (1887) as “The Queen” of inscriptions, is a testament to the collaborative achievements of epigraphers. Echoes of the Res Gestae in later authors, including Tacitus and Velleius Paterculus, reflect ancient Roman interest in studying, interpreting and appropriating this inscription (cf. Cooley 2009). This interest has continued over the years, with epigraphers ranging from amateur to professional reconstructing and reinterpreting the text.

Archival research holds the potential to shed new light on the graffiti of Herculaneum, particularly for many of the nearly 60% of graffiti that are now lost. The paper will illustrate how careful study of Matteo Della Corte’s archived research papers can 1) improve readings for a number of graffiti which are currently unclear; 2) provide the only line drawings for many graffiti which were only published in type in CIL; and 3) show how Della Corte came to his propose some of his most problematic readings for the graffiti of Herculaneum.

The paper offers an overview of a project based in Berlin, at Inscriptiones Graecae, which aims to publish a lifelong correspondence (782 letters) between two of the most significant epigraphists of the 20^th century: Günther Klaffenbach (1890‒1972), Director of the Inscriptiones Graecae (IG) at the Berlin Academy of Sciences and Humanities and author of several corpora, and Louis Robert (1904‒1985), Professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and at the College de France, and inter alia editor with Jeanne Robert of the Bulletin Épigraphique.

The modern student of Classics enjoys a thriving ancient world studies environment and can find one or other training course in Greek and/or Latin epigraphy.

This paper explores the study of ancient inscriptions in the 18^th century by contrasting the work of two early travellers, Richard Pococke (1704-1765) and Richard Chandler (1737-1810), who both published collections of inscriptions encountered on expeditions to the eastern Mediterranean. By focussing on how these two authors treated two different inscriptions (CIL III 143 & IG I³ 1508), we can gain an insight into their aims and working practices. We also see the variety of audiences for whom such collections were assembled.

As a tool for research, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have developed into a mature and even standard means to examine the ancient world from a spatial perspective. Indeed, the accessibility of geographical means to examine evidence and the pervasiveness desire to do so has been described as “the spatial turn” (Guldi). In undergraduate teaching, the results of GIS-based research are ubiquitous and now a marketplace of textbooks dedicated to GIS exists to teach students to deploy these methods and technologies (e.g., Conolly and Lake).