Ashbrook Centers, The Cicero Fellows program presents a national conference on all things Latin titled “New Directions in Roman Political Thought”.

The conference is open to the public and will be held on Saturday Sept. 24, from 9 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. in the Ronk Lecture Hall at the Dwight Schar College of Education on the campus of Ashland University.

A keynote lecture will be held before the conference on Friday Sept. 23 from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., also in Ronk Lecture Hall.

Last fall, the Ashbrook Scholars Program created a new program called The Cicero Fellows, dedicated for Ashbrook scholars who take Latin. Cicero Fellows will receive money for completing Latin courses. In addition to completing these courses, one of the conditions of being a Cicero Fellow is to attend and participate in some kind of annual event.

David West, professor of Latin and assistant professor of history said, “I wanted to do something bigger than I did for last year’s event, so I’m trying to increase enthusiasm for the study of ancient world especially ancient Rome among the Cicero Fellows, but this conference course is also being advertised to the whole university community, so anyone who happens to be interested I hope you know will come check it out.”

Students will be able to ask questions and be involved in the discussions with the visiting professors speaking at this event.

“My hope is that this really will be an opportunity for students to talk to experts in ancient Rome from around the country, and it’s a cool way for them to learn more and to kind of grow in their own scholarly maturity, and engage with scholars and a professional setting, and it’s also a chance for us to advertise Ashland University to the rest of the country,” West said.

This event will be split into four different panels–those panels being Cicero, Roman Responses to Greece, Sallust and Tacitus and The Politics of Physics and Epicureanism, respectively.

Every panel will be followed by a Q and A discussion.

At this conference there will be nine guest professors speaking including: Jed W. Adkins, Duke
University, doing the keynote lecture speaking on “The Christian Origins of Tolerence; Michelle T. Clarke, Dartmouth College, speaking during panel one on “Cicero’s Republican Constitutionalism in Pro Rabrio perduellionis reo”;
Michael C. Hawley, University of Houston, speaking during panel one on “Cicero and the Philosophic Grounds of Liberty”;
Wayne Ambler, University of Colorado at Boulder, speaking during panel two on “Helping Cato? Strengthening the Roman Case against Greek Culture”;
David T. West, Ashland University, speaking during panel two on “No imaginary City: Republican Rome as the Best Regime in Livy’s 3rd Decade”;
Julie Melbane, Indiana University Bloomington, speaking during panel three on “Draining the Bilge: Sallust on the Exclusionary Politics of Cicero’s Catilnarians”; Carl E. Young, Hillsdale College, speaking during panel three on “The Farmer, the Tyrant, and the Quiet Man: Tacitus Agricola as Exoteric Literature”;
Matthew Gorey, Wabash College, speaking during panel four on “Physics as Politics in imperial Roman Literature”;
Daniel Kapust, University of Wisconsin-Madison, speaking during panel four on “Machiavelli’s ‘Lucretian’ Republic”.

“We’ve had a lot of donors and stuff to get more people into Latin, and I’m really excited about it,” Sabrina Maristela, student programs coordinator, said. “I think so often just in university life and study, we only get to hear from a handful of voices, you know, the professors that we have here, and we have a lot of students now who are interested in classics.”

This program will be sponsored by The Ashbrook Center at Ashland University.