Donald Russell Memorial Lecture 2025

St John’s College, Oxford, is delighted to announce that Professor Ewen Bowie, Emeritus Fellow in Classics, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, will be delivering the third annual Donald Russell Memorial Lecture, on the theme of 'Mesomedes and his fans'. The lecture will be held in the St John’s College Auditorium, St Giles’, Oxford on Thursday 23 October 2025 (week 2 of Michaelmas Term) at 5pm, and is open to everyone, but we ask attendees to sign up in advance if possible.

Please note: this lecture may be recorded and there may be a photographer present.

Register to attend the lecture here

The Cretan poet Mesomedes, who sang his compositions while accompanying himself on a stringed instrument, was a great success in his lifetime. He is said to have been a close friend of the emperor Hadrian, and three of his poems have been transmitted with musical notation, probably because they were used to teach music in later antiquity and Byzantium. They and the other 10 poems attributed to Mesomedes are valuable records of the nature of the poetry sung to the lyre or to the cithara by some of the most highly rewarded category of musicians in the high Roman empire - metrically simple, but not always simple in thought or expression. The lecture will explore Mesomedes' origins and poetic choices and assess his impact.

The lecture series has been established by the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford, to celebrate and honour the contribution of Professor Donald Russell FBA (1920-2020) to the discipline of Classics, and his exceptionally generous support for Classics at St John’s, and is dedicated to the fields of Classical studies in which he had particular interest, including the art of Greek and Latin prose, rhetoric, and imperial Greek literature.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the Garden Quad Reception Room.

Professor Ewen Bowie

Professor Bowie is a world authority in many fields of the study of ancient Greek literature, and has published widely on imperial Greek literature. He was the second Woodhouse Junior Research Fellow in Classics at St John’s (1963-5), before becoming E.P. Warren Praelector in Classics at Corpus Christi (1965-2007) and Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford. His recent publications include an edition and commentary of Longus: Daphnis and Chloe (Cambridge 2019) and three volumes of his Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture (Cambridge 2021-2023).

Ancient Greek Choir Workshop

St John's will be celebrating Mesomedes again later in Michaelmas Term with an Ancient Greek choral workshop led by Bettina Joy de Guzman, musician and PhD Classics candidate from the University of Reading. Bettina will lead and accompany everyone with her lyre on a musical journey from 2nd century BC Delphi, to 2nd century AD Tralles in Asia Minor, and Hadrian’s Roman Empire.

No musical background is needed - just a desire to connect with the ancient world through singing ancient Greek songs in joyful unison! We will attempt portions of three hymns by Mesomedes of Crete (Hymn to the Muse, Hymn to the Sun, and Hymn to Calliope and Apollo), and the song of Seikilos, using transliterated notations and reconstruction from Documents of Ancient Greek Music by Pohlmann and West, as well as the first part of the Delphic Paean by Athenaios Athenaiou, using transliterations and reconstructions by Armand D’Angour and Barnaby Brown.

More information is available here.