SCS Blog Author Page

Posts by Kathleen Coleman

A large room with shelves of books lining the walls and wooden tables with red chairs and turquoise lamps across the middle

Blog: Biographies of Latin via the endangered TLL Fellowship

Why does the Thesaurus linguae Latinae matter? Because it is based upon analysis of every single instance of every single work surviving from classical antiquity down to approximately 200 CE, and all the lexicographically significant examples from 200 to 600 CE. This means that an article in the TLL crafts a portrait of a word in all its complexity and idiosyncrasy, from its earliest attestation until Latin morphed into the Romance languages. It is a bit like reading a really good biography.

Blog: Nondum Arabes Seresque Rogant: Classics Looks East

By Kathleen Coleman, Harvard University

This paper was delivered as part of "The Future of Classical Education: A Dialogue," a panel organized by the SCS Program Committee at the 147th annual meeting of the SCS in San Francisco, January 8, 2016.

The fourth book of the Siluae opens with a poem to mark the inauguration of Domitian’s seventeenth consulship in 95 CE. This is too important an occasion for a mere mortal to commemorate. So Statius gives the microphone to the god Janus, who hogs the discourse for more than half the poem (27 lines out of a total of 47). Among many other tributes, the god opens by addressing the emperor as magne parens mundi and declaring that Rome has longed to see him permanently gracing Janus’ own month of January; he imagines Minerva herself weaving Domitian’s consular toga; he invokes the help of Roma and Vetustas in reviewing all the precedents for such a glittering incumbent of the consulship Read more …