Open Seminar: The Briefest of Wonders: the Colossus of Rhodes

Location: The Delphi Bank Mezzanine, The Greek Centre, 168 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
Date: THURSDAY - 5 Mar. 2020 @ 7:00pm
Presenters: Professor Tim Parkin

Language of Presentation: English | R.M.L.G.*: 0 - No knowledge of Greek required.
Entry: FREE

Synopsis

Shakespeare has Cassius speak of Caesar bestriding the narrow world like a Colossus under whose huge legs we petty men walk. So what do we know of the original Colossus, the third-century BC statue of Helios erected in the harbour of the city of Rhodes?
How, where and why was it built, and what became of it? In this illustrated talk I shall attempt to bring this short-lived wonder back to life and consider why, despite being so short-lived, it looms so large still in modern imaginations.

Bio

Tim Parkin joined the Classics and Archaeology department at the University of Melbourne in 2018 as the inaugural Elizabeth and James Tatoulis Chair in Classics. Before this he had spent over eleven years as Professor of Ancient History at the University of Manchester (UK). He is a New Zealander by birth who was awarded a D.Phil. at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and who, since 1989, has worked in universities in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom, as well as spending 14 months in Germany as an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow. Tim's teaching covers both Greek and Roman history and classical languages. His main research is in ancient history, particularly Roman social, cultural, and demographic history. Among his publications are Demography and Roman Society (1992), Old Age in the Roman World: A Social and Cultural History (2003), Roman Social History: A Sourcebook (2007), and The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (2014). He is currently working on, inter al., ancient sexual health, in particular sexually transmitted diseases.