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UC Irvine Emeriti Association
Community Lectures
May 22, 2015
(Friday)
3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Light refreshments will be available.
Segesta: A Trojan City in Sicily?
In this illustrated talk, we look at the interesting history of Segesta, its temples
and sanctuaries, and how the Trojan war was used by non-Greeks to form a
link with the larger Hellenic past.
As a crossroad of civilizations in the Mediterranean, Sicily has always been a producer of cultural innovators, from Stesichoros to Archimedes, Mithaikos to Giuseppe de Lampedusa. Garibaldi got his
start in western Sicily and led the way to founding modern Italy. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas stopped
twice in Sicily, where he was welcomed by fellow Trojans, refugees from the war, and he founded the
new cities of Segesta and Eryx. Virgil used ideas already in the air centuries earlier, well before the
Romans were powerful. Segesta was a victim of Verres, the Roman governor of Sicily. Cicero draws a
vivid picture of his looting of their beloved cult state of Artemis. Segesta survived the loss and continued on as a significant cultural center of Sicily.
Margaret M. Miles is an archaeologist, current Professor of Art History and Classics at
the University of California, Irvine. She recently served a six-year term as the Andrew W.
Mellon Professor of Classical Studies at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.
Her publications include a study of the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous (Hesperia 1989),
Agora Excavations XXXI: The City Eleusinion (Princeton, 1998), Art as Plunder: the Ancient
Origins of Debate about Cultural Property (Cambridge, 2008), and three edited volumes:
Cleopatra: A Sphinx Revisited (Berkeley 2011), Autopsy in Athens. Recent Archaeological
Research in Athens and Attica (2015), and Blackwell’s Companion to Greek Architecture
(forthcoming 2015). She is starting new fieldwork at Segesta in Sicily in July, 2015.
Lecture Location:
University Hills Community Center
1083 California Avenue
Free event and parking with RSVP.
Questions?:
The UCI Center for
Emeriti & Retirees
111 Theory, Ste. 200
Irvine, CA 92697
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Phone:
949-824-7769
Fax:
949-824-7007
Web:
retirees.uci.edu
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UCI Emeriti
RSVP for this event at emeriti@uci.edu or (949) 824-7769
Website:
Sites.uci.edu/emeriti