Sir Ronald Syme Memorial Lectures
A memorial lecture fund commemorates the career of Sir Ronald Syme OM, perhaps the greatest classical scholar New Zealand has ever produced.
He began his studies in Classics at Victoria University of Wellington and went on to become Camden Professor of Ancient History at the University of Oxford.
Sir Ronald died in 1989, a few days before the 50th anniversary of the appearance of his famous book The Roman Revolution. He left a small bequest to the Classics Department of Victoria University of Wellington, which, together with contributions from a number of benefactors, now funds an invitation to a prominent international scholar to give a public lecture in Wellington every few years.
The most recent Sir Ronald Syme Memorial Lecture was held on Thursday, 8 June 2023.
Previous lectures
2023 | Greg Woolf, Ronald J. Mellor Distinguished Professor of Ancient History (California) | Rome Unbound! How the Republican elite won the world and lost control of their culture |
2018 | John Marincola, Leon Golden Professor of Classics (Florida State) | Asinius Pollio and the Roman Revolution |
2016 | Nicholas Purcell, Camden Professor of Ancient History (Oxford) | The Princess and the Procurator |
2014 | Thomas Habinek (Southern California) | Cynthia's Bones: Authorship and Personhood in Classical Rome |
2012 | Richard de Puma (Iowa) | Etruscan Forgeries: The Arts of Profit and Deceit |
2010 | Robin Seager (Liverpool) | The Domination of Pompeius |
2008 | Kathleen Coleman (Harvard) | Orchestrated Violence: the Role of Music in the Roman Amphitheatre |
2006 | Dennis Feeney (Princeton) | Virgil’s Tale of Four Cities: Troy, Carthage, Alexandria and Rome |
2004 | Mary Beard (Cambridge) | A Captive Audience: Victims and Prisomers at the Roman Triumph |
2002 | A.J. Woodman (Durham) | Tiberius and the Taste of Power: The Year 33 in Tacitus |
2001 | Werner Eck (Köln) | Roma Caput Mundi |
1999 | Tim Parkin (Canterbury) | Letting Nature Take Its Course: The Health of the Elderly in Antiquity |
1998 | Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton) | Counting the Votes: Politics, Myth, and Utopia in Aristophanes |
1996 | T. Peter Wiseman (Exeter) | The Poet, the Plebs, and the Chorus Girls |
1994 | Erich Gruen (Berkeley) | The Roman Oligarchy: Image and Perception |
1992 | John Matthews (Queen’s College, Oxford) | Constantine and the Second Roman Revolution |