[Usyd_Classics_Events] Reminder: USYD Classics Research Seminar #2, S2 2025, Alexandra Pinkham

[Ben Brown]

Dear Friends of Classics and Ancient History,



We are delighted to invite you to the second presentation of Semester 2, 2025 in our Classics and Ancient History research seminar series.



August 25th (Monday, 12.15pm UTC+11) V. Gordon Childe Boardroom, Madsen Building Level 2.



Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/83159864939



Alexandra Pinkham (University of Sydney)



A Voice from the Crossroads: Hecate Speaks (Valerius Flaccus Argonautica 6.488-503, and some Early Modern Comparanda)


Abstract:
Hecate’s speech in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica (6.497-502) represents something of an anomaly in Roman literature.  Although speeches by female goddesses are commonplace in epic and other genres, nowhere else in the literature of ancient Rome does this particular goddess speak.  Hecate is frequently mentioned in descriptions of witchcraft in both Greek and Roman sources, and she is routinely called upon to lend her aid to magical rituals taking place, but it is rare indeed for the reader to get a concrete glimpse of this elusive and powerful goddess.  Using a close reading of Hecate’s longest extant speech (in Valerius’ Argonautica 6) as a starting point, this paper aims to sketch out a character portrait of the goddess, insofar as we are able to with the admittedly scant evidence.  The close reading presented here identifies an understudied intertextual link with another divine speech in Virgil’s Aeneid 11 which helps to situate Hecate within the epic tradition of goddesses concerned with the protection of their mortal charges, and the punishment of those who wrong them.  In the second part of the paper, we jump forward some fifteen centuries to early-modern England and find two other Hecatean speeches, this time in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Thomas Middleton’s The Witch.  Hecate’s speech in Macbeth in fact bears some remarkable similarities to her speech in Valerius’ Argonautica, and while this paper won’t (quite) argue that Shakespeare and Middleton’s Hecates are directly modelled on Valerius’ portrait of the goddess, it will show that they do nevertheless offer interesting and entertaining comparanda for the Classical material.

Biography:
Alexandra Pinkham is a Classicist from Sydney, Australia.  She holds undergraduate degrees, an MPhil and a PhD from the University of Sydney, where she works as a sessional academic in the Department of Classics and Ancient History.  Her research focuses on female voices in Roman literature and their potential to disrupt and subvert the power dynamic between male author and female subject by engaging in metapoetic discourse.  Her recent work has examined the representation of two characters, Dido and Medea, across Roman literature in passages where the two women are shown either unwittingly or deliberately causing disruption in the cosmos.  In addition to her work on Latin and Greek literature, Alexandra is also interested in the reception of the Classics in the literature of medieval Ireland and early-modern England.

All best, Ben

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