Latin Forum Schedule

2026 Latin Forum

February 14, 2026

Keynote Lecture

The Lives of Enslaved People in Roman Italy

Professor Sarah Levin-Richardson, University of Washington

What can the ancient Roman site of Pompeii—famously preserved by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in the year 79—tell us about ancient slavery? From frescoes showing enslaved individuals helping drunken banqueters to the dark narrow hallways enslaved servants had to traverse in houses, enslaved individuals were made to do whatever their owner wanted. At the same time, enslaved individuals had key roles in commerce (carbonized bread shows the names of the enslaved bakers stamped into it!) and even politics (several enslaved female bartenders endorsed political candidates on the walls of the tavern where they worked!). Once freed, some became citizens and quite wealthy (even owning slaves themselves), although they always carried around traces of their lives as enslaved people.

Seminars

Voting in the Roman Republic

Professor Alice Hu

The Roman res publica is often cited as the model for American representative democracy. But how did Roman elections and voting really work? Who got to vote, and how much did their vote count? How similar, actually, are the Roman and American electoral systems? This seminar will offer an introduction to—and firsthand experience in—elections and voting practices in the Roman Republic.

Facing the Dead: Mummies and Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt

Professor Tom Landvatter

The so-called “Faiyum Portraits” are the most famous examples of ancient portrait painting. These vivid, naturalistic portraits of everyday, ordinary people in the Roman Empire are rightly a source of admiration and fascination. They are, however, most often presented to and understood by the public solely as portraits in a modern sense, rather than as what they really were: mummy portraits. In this seminar, we put these portraits into their proper context, considering them as an element of traditional Egyptian burial practices, as well as consider what the portraits can tell us about Egyptians and their relationship to the rest of the Roman Empire and Roman Imperial culture.

Uri, Vinciri, Ferroque Necari: Entertainment, Death, and Spectacle in the Roman Arena     

Professor Ellen Millender

“To be burned, to be chained, to be killed by the sword” – this is the gladiator’s oath in ancient Rome. Who ended up in the arena? Who watched them and why? What role(s) did this violent spectacle play in Roman society? In order to get a better sense of these early “celebrities” and their “fans,” we will examine the literary and archaeological evidence on gladiatorial combat in Republican and Imperial Rome. Inscriptional evidence from Pompeii and other sites helps to reveal the nature of the relationship between the gladiators and their audience and the kind of performance that the audience expected from the slaves and war-prisoners who entertained them in the arena.  We will also look at texts to get a better sense of how the Romans thought about such spectacles that became the most popular form of popular entertainment in ancient Rome.

Greek and Roman Money

Professor Nigel Nicholson

Money is a fascinating social phenomenon. Greek and Roman coins seem so familiar that we think we understand their uses and abuses. The Roman denarius, produced during the war against Hannibal, and the first Roman coin to be produced according to Roman rather than Greek weight standards, has bequeathed words for money to Spanish speakers (dinero), Italian speakers (denaro), and Arabic and Slavic language speakers (dinar). And yet the English word, “money,” derives from the Latin word monere, to warn—while the Roman word for money, pecunia, derives from livestock, and the Greek words, chremata and nomismata, from movable property, on the one hand, and social convention, on the other. What then was money? What was it for? How was it made? Why were some coins so beautiful? In this seminar, we will discuss the uses of money and examine a selection of historically and artistically significant coins to understand better their function in the Greek and Roman worlds.

Workshop

The History and Development of the Roman Alphabet

Gregory MacNaughton, Education Outreach and Calligraphy Initiative Coordinator

According to Michael Jackson, "ABC (is) easy as 1, 2, 3"* but is it really that simple? How much do we really know about the ABCs, also known as the Roman alphabet? Where did it develop, how does it work, and why do the letters look the way they do? In this workshop, we will investigate the origins of the Roman alphabet. We'll explore how the Romans wrote, what tools they used to write, and what they wrote on. We'll discuss the differences between palaeography and epigraphy, use works like "boustrophedon" and learn at least five ways to write an ampersand.

*Title song from the album ABC by the Jackson 5, Motown Records, 1970