PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Program in Hellenic Studies

Conference

Athens in Late Antiquity:
Civic, Intellectual, and Religious Life Between Paganism and Christianity

Friday May 14, 2010
10:00 am - 3:30 pm
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
Program

Dimitrios Konstantinou, "Olympieion Athens" ca. 1870

Despite its political and economic insignificance, late antique Athens regained, in constant competition with Alexandria, Constantinople, Antioch and Berytus, a leading position in the intellectual life of the Greek-speaking world. This colloquium proposes to lay the foundation for a comprehensive interdisci­pli­nary survey of Athens’ cultural history in late antiquity, taking into account the full range of literary and material sources. Our aim is to analyse the transformation of local Athenian society, culture and religion within the structure of the late Roman state, and to identify and contextualise the various forces of persistence and change such as imperial institutions, local elites, the emerging church, and the declining philosophical schools. (more...)

Welcome:  Dimitri Gondicas (Princeton University)

Introduction:  Johannes Hahn and Christian Wildberg

Johannes Hahn (Münster University /Princeton University)
“Provincial Backwater Town or Mediterranean Intellectual Metropolis:
Foreigners and Urban Identity in Late Antique Athens”
Abstract

Andreas Gutsfeld (Université Nancy 2)
“Lokale Eliten im spätantiken Athen” / “Local Elites in Late Antique Athens”
Abstract

Edward Watts (Indiana University, Bloomington)
“Athens between West and East: How Fourth-Century Political Liminality led to Fifth-Century Pagan Survival”
Abstract

Christian Wildberg (Princeton University)
“Imagining the Material Culture of Intellectual Life in Late Antique Athens”
Abstract

Concluding Remarks:  Peter R. Brown (Princeton University)

Cosponsored by:  Princeton University, Group for the Study of Late Antiquity

In Collaboration with: Münster University, Exzellenzcluster 'Religion und Politik'

Last updated 5/14/10