Special
Collections, University of Otago, is pleased to announce the beginning of ‘Maths,
Politics and Concrete. The Legacy of the Classical World’, an exhibition
that aims to highlight some of the influences that the ancient
Greeks and Romans have had on western civilisation. The exhibition starts on 28
June and runs through to 20 September 2013.
Classicist
Richard Hingley once wrote: ‘The Classical past retains a highly significant
relationship to the present’. It is certainly true that no cultural
tradition develops in a vacuum, and that we are all influenced by those who
have gone before us. From Homer’s Odyssey and the nascent secular
intellectualism of the early Greek philosophers, to the recipe for concrete and
the perfection of archway construction, the Classical World has left a legacy
which we now take for granted. Indeed, the cultural legacy from Greece and
Roman is all-encompassing in areas such as mathematics, medicine, law, and
politics, to literature, philosophy, architecture and engineering.
This exhibition
feature works by Ovid, Apollonius, Archimedes, Xenophon and Marcus Aurelius,
names not necessarily familiar to all but ones which have definitely shaped the
past. Notable items on display include a 1618 edition of Palladio’s Antiquitates Almae
Urbis Romae; a leaf from the great Polyglot Bible of 1514-17; Isaac Oliver Byrne’s The First Six Books of the
Elements of Euclid (1847); Isaac Asimov’s poem ‘The Foundation of Science
Fiction Success’; and a facsimile of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Please pass
this message on to colleagues, friends and all interested parties.
Exhibition
dates: 28 June to 20 September 2013
Venue: de Beer
Gallery, Special Collections, University of Otago Library
Time: 8.30 to
5.00 Monday to Friday
or Dr. Donald Kerr, Special Collections Librarian (Donald.kerr@otago.ac.nz); phone: (03)
479-8330.
Illustration above - Buckland Wright image of Hector
Illustration above - Buckland Wright image of Hector
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