Thursday February 27th, 4pm
Dr Simone Mehr, Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg
The department will be hosting Dr Simone Mehr from Erlangen University in Germany on Thursday February 27. Her talk should appeal to anyone with interests in rhetoric, philosophy, images of power, imperial politics, early Christianity, Greek of the imperial period, or Late Antiquity:
Simone Mehr “Why Themistios’ praise of the emperor Valens posed a threat to the pagan philosophers” 4pm, Classics Seminar Room UH 448.
Themistius was a remarkable survivor of the religious upheavals of the fourth century: a pagan who nonetheless found favour among a series of Christian emperors, and a skilled politician responsible for the vast expansion of the new Constantinopolitan senate in the late 350s. Committed to Aristotelian ideals of practical philosophy, he also bucked the late antique trend for contemplative Neoplatonism.
All are welcome,