The Ronald Syme Lecture: Professor Kathleen Coleman on Nero and Tiridates

Coleman will elaborate on the reinstatement of Tiridates, the Parthian prince, on the Armenian throne after much jockeying for position between Rome and Parthia. A surviving fragment of the Cassius Dio's Roman History recounts the journey undertaken by Tiridates, his wife, and thousands of followers and their subsequent detour from Rome to the Bay of Naples where Tiridates met Emporer Nero. In the course of the lecture, Coleman will suggest reasons, diplomatic and otherwise, for the illogical choice of route and the reception that was laid on for Tiridates at the end of it. 

Professor Coleman is the James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University and the author of Statius, Silvae IV: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford University Press, 1988, re-issued in paperback by Bristol Classical Press/Duckworth, 1998) and Martial, Liber Spectaculorum: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford University Press, 2006). 

The Ronald Syme Lecture series was created in memory of Sir Ronald Syme, historian and classicist. He was a Fellow of Wolfson College from 1970 until 1989 and was widely regarded as the twentieth century's greatest historian of Ancient Rome. 

The event is free and open to all. Learn more