Friday Lates talk: Translating antiquity

Join Professor Matthew Fox for a talk about how the ancient world has been presented in art and film over time. Taking his cue from Ming Wong’s film ‘Dance of the sun on the water | Saltatio solis in aqua’, in which the dialogue is performed entirely in Latin, Fox draws together a history of how antiquity continues to live in our contemporary imaginations.

The talk precedes a unique screening of the film with a live score at 8pm.

Matthew Fox is an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Classical Studies. He was Professor of Classics at Glasgow University from 2007-2025, and lectured at Birmingham from 1992 until 2007. He has published two monographs: 'Roman Historical Myths' (1996) and 'Cicero’s Philosophy of History' (2007), and is currently completing a third, the fruit of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. It explores the use of materialist thinking in Latin literature from Plautus to Pliny the Elder. Shorter publications cover a wide range of topics: Classical Reception, Gender in Antiquity, History of Scholarship, the intersection of Rhetoric and Historiography. He has also collaborated with school teachers, composers and visual artists, and has recently written reviews of the Venice Biennale for the CUCD bulletin. He was Hugh Last Fellow at the British School at Rome for 2024-2025.