Continuing the Conversations: in Honour of Professor Vivienne Gray

This day of papers will be held at the start of ASCS in Auckland on 2 February with the following link for remote attendance, and from 9 am onwards Auckland time: 

Zoom Link

Vivienne Gray (1947-2025) was Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Auckland. She completed her BA and MA degrees at Auckland and her PhD at Cambridge. In 1974 Vivienne took up a lectureship at Auckland, where she pursued her career, with an interlude at Oxford in 1979 and 1980 on a Rhodes Visiting Fellowship. Vivienne was known particularly for her work on Xenophon, which included The Character of Xenophon's ‘Hellenica’ (Duckworth, 1989), The Framing of Socrates: the Literary Interpretation of Xenophon's ‘Memorabilia’ (Steiner, 1998), Xenophon on Government (CUP, 2007), Xenophon: Oxford Readings in Classical Studies (edited collection; OUP, 2010), and Xenophon's Mirror of Princes: Reading the Reflections (OUP, 2011). Among Vivienne’s favourite ancient authors were Homer, Herodotus, and Lucretius. Vivienne read a lot of poetry, ancient and modern, including Greek lyric brilliance with her students, Gerard Manley Hopkins even from her school days, and Clive James’s poetry of illness. She was a long-time fan of Bob Dylan. Vivienne loved the landscapes and seascapes of Greece, and made her final trip there in September 2024, visiting Crete, Naxos, Paros, and Syros. Vivienne will be remembered as a fine scholar, an inspiring teacher, and a loyal friend. ASCS 47 at the University of Auckland will feature three panels in Vivienne's honour, bringing together some former students, colleagues, and old friends of Vivienne’s to speak on topics of special interest to her. 

Continuing the Conversations:
in Honour of Professor Vivienne Gray
Monday, 2 February 2026
University of Auckland, City Campus
Sir Owen G Glenn Building

Panel 1 (10.00am-11.30am):
The pain and power of isolation among tyrants — Abigail Dawson
Xenophon’s artfully awful style — Simon Oswald
Lucretius’ magnet — Denis Feeney
Panel 2 (12.00pm-1.30pm)
The Prose Homer of History — Jessica Priestley
Xenophon’s Beautiful Horses — Anneka Rene
Socrates and his seven (?) disciples — Paul McKechnie
Panel 3 (2.30pm-4.00pm)
Herodotus' Scythians: Genuine Ethnography or Misrepresentation? — Hyun Jin Kim
Xenophon and the kosmos — Emily Baragwanath
​The Homeric Bob Dylan — Richard Thomas 

click 'read more' for further information

Part One

Chair: Jessica Priestley

Abigail Dawson
Independent Scholar

The Pain and Power of Isolation among Tyrants 
The tyrant Hiero of Syracuse, in the eponymous work by Xenophon, complains to Simonides that his life is not to be envied. He is isolated from true friendship by his position, and yet fears isolation (Hiero, 6.1-4). Similarly, in Herodotus’ Histories, there appears to be a motif of isolation in the stories of tyrants and the Persian monarchs. Herodotus shows us men who live in extremes, just as Xenophon does. This paper explores the motif and variations of isolation among some of the tyrants and monarchs of the Histories. It stands in conjunction to Vivienne Gray’s research on the tyrants in Xenophon and Herodotus’ works, as well as her insights into the storytelling of Herodotus. The conclusion offers wider implications for demonstrating a clash between the culture of the individual and the culture of community: both are seen in Herodotus’ Histories.

Simon Oswald
University of Massachusetts Amherst 

Xenophon's Artfully Awful Style
Vivienne Gray's gritty 1985 defence of Xenophon's authorship of Cynegeticus, a guide to hunting, established the didactics of moral leadership as a principal generic undercurrent
connecting his diverse array of works. Threaded within his moralising epilogue are revealing insights into the underlying character and goals of his rather idiosyncratic writing style (Cyn.13)–apparently intended as a rebuttal of unfavourable reviews by his encircling critics. In this paper I examine the robustness of Xenophon's defence. Could his claim to be "but a layman" (Cyn. 13.5) and wish for his works "to actually be useful rather than just seem so" (Cyn.13.7) account for tedious passages elsewhere, like what to look for in a hunting dog–"it should be big" (Cyn. 4.1)–and an appropriate dog name–"Big" (Cyn. 7.5). Might his gripe that some sophist "will claim that what is well-written and logically-written ... is neither well-written nor logically-written" (Cyn. 13.6)–a sentence that should leave all sympathies with the sophist–be artfully awful, alongside other zingers like "if someone thinks we're repeating ourselves here because we're now talking about the same things as we discussed before, that's not 'repetition'" (Hipp. 8.2)? Xenophon is quite capable of startingly vivid prose (e.g. Hell.7.5.26-27). Might his nonchalant, uneven style be a careful strategy of sleight-of-hand statements and approaches aimed at exasperating his critics in order to mask a deep care and anxiety thereof?

Dennis Feeney
Princeton University

Lucretius' Magnet
Lucretius’ sixth book closes with the famous Athenian plague, but immediately preceding
that account is an overlooked section explaining at great length how magnets work (906-
1089). The discussion of magnets feels oddly out of place, because in the proem to the book Lucretius says he will explain dramatic celestial and meteorological phenomena, and the magnet hardly seems to count. The paper will explore the rationale behind the discussion of the magnet, attempting to explain why Lucretius devotes the penultimate passage of his work to this apparently anticlimactic subject, and how he makes this topic work as part of his closural programme.

Part Two

Chair: Lisa Bailey

Jessica Priestley
Melbourne Girls Grammar School

The Prose Homer of Poetry
In 1995, an inscription now known as the Salmakis Inscription (SGO 01/12/02) was found
cut into an ancient wall on a promontory near Bodrum. In it, the literary achievements of the city of ancient Halicarnassus are celebrated. The Salmakis Inscription dates to either the second or first century BCE, and among the authors celebrated is Herodotus, who is there described as ‘the prose Homer of History’ (τὸν πεζὸν ἐν ἱστορίαισιν Ὅμηρον). Ancient writers understood the relationship between Herodotus and Homer in a variety of ways, from the admiring to the less flattering. The association with poetry in general and Homer in particular could be positive, when it came to Herodotus’ style, or negative, when it came to Herodotus’ reputation for lies. In this paper, I hope to show that the striking appellation in the Salmakis Inscription is, at the very least, a useful focus for reflecting on Herodotus’ reputation in antiquity, and may even be a way of cleverly negotiating that ambiguous reputation. I shall explore some of the evidence for ancient critical discussions that connect Herodotus with Homer, and how this connection relates to Herodotus’ reputation for ‘poetic’ prose, entertaining muthoi, and telling lies (of different sorts).

Anneka Rene
Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland 

Xenophon's Beautiful Horses 
The hoplite soldier dominates scholarly narratives of Athenian military identity, eclipsing the power and place of other military units almost entirely. This paper argues that through agonistic public displays, described by Xenophon in the Hipparchicus and reinforced by reliefs such as the Parthenon Frieze and anthippasia monuments, the cavalry asserted their role as one that was not secondary, but central to civic spectacle and elite self-representation. Processions through the Agora, mock battles in the Hippodrome, and javelin contests in the Lyceum were not mere exercises in training: they were performances staged to inscribe cavalry prestige into the heart of Athenian public life. The citizen cavalry of Athens had the unique opportunity to transmute martial skill into civic capital, reaffirming their wealth, aretê, and political weight before the demos. By combining literary and artistic evidence, this paper challenges the marginalisation of the cavalry in modern accounts and demonstrates how agonistic spectacle provided a distinct medium through which cavalry rivalled the hoplite in the imagination of the polis.

Paul McKechnie 
Macquarie University 

Socrates and his Seven(?) Disciples 
If we believe Diogenes Laertius, Socrates (who never wrote a line) had seven followers, including Xenophon and Plato, who were all philosophical authors. Mostly avoiding the concerns of the doxographers, this paper will consider the construction of the archive (as Tim Whitmarsh would call it), and the diffusion of philosophical thinking across the Greek world, in the context of authorship and non-authorship.

Part Three

Chair: Bill Barnes 

Hyun Jin Kim
University of Melbourne

Herodotus' Scythians: Genuine Ethnography or Misrepresentation?
Herodotus has in the past often been accused of being a clueless tourist or even a liar
distorting foreign practices and customs in order to entertain his Greek audience. This paper will revisit Herodotus' ethnography on the Scythians and present a more nuanced picture. The historicity of the ethnographic details within Herodotus' account is not in doubt. However, it is also clear that Herodotus' ethnography on the Scythians is coloured by the historian's Near-East-centric cultural biases. This must also be recognised to fully understand the complexity of Herodotus' narrative.

Emily Baragwanath
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Xenophon and the Kosmos
Xenophon takes the kosmos to have been designed and created by beneficent deities (Mem.1.4). His vision is of interrelated divine, human and animal realms, with commonalities connecting human beings across sex and status. It is animated by a principle of philia (friendship, connectedness). So, Xenophon reveals connections between humans and gods, human and non-human animals, and men and women. His treatises probe the relationships between human beings and their horses and dogs (Eq., Hipp.). He depicts women and men together reverencing the divine, as in creating divinely sanctioned order within households (e.g. Oec. 8.18-21).

Human beings at their best share affinities with the divine, as when they govern in exemplary fashion or delight in being honoured (e.g. Oec. 21.11-12). Conversely, assumptions of human exceptionalism are put to the test by his anthropomorphizing approach to animals. The gods guide the virtuous but punish those who disrupt cosmic order by seeking excessive power (Hell. 5.4.1).

Xenophon’s appreciation of the material and embodied dimensions of human beings founds his respect for female bodies, which – like the land – have a (god-like) capacity to ‘produce’ and ‘nourish’ (e.g. Mem. 2.2). The principles modelled by the earth include reciprocity (vital to friendship).

In these ways Xenophon downplays categorical binary divides, bringing closer together humans, animals, and the natural world, as well as men and women, and free and slave.

Richard Thomas 
Harvard University 

The Homeric Bob Dylan
In Chapter 8 of my 2017 book, Why Bob Dylan Matters, I explored Dylan’s word-for-word
creative intertextual thefts from Robert Fagles’ 1996 Penguin translation of the Odyssey.
Once we hear and recognize those Homeric lines in their new setting, across the songs of the 2012 album Tempest—always taken from the words of Odysseus, never from narrative portions—the singer effectively becomes Odysseus.

The Homeric poems have stayed with Dylan, in concert and in the closing words of the Nobel Lecture, delivered on June 7, 2017: “Sing in me, o Muse, and through me tell the story.” Subsequently, in the songs of the 2020 album, Rough & Rowdy Ways Dylan abandoned the precise sort of Homeric furtum of Tempest and adopted a looser intertextual mode, more stream of conscience in nature than the cento-like manner of the 2012 songs.

This paper focuses on two of the songs from the 2020 album: “Crossing the Rubicon,” and
“Mother of Muses.” Dylan, who has performed thousands of concerts over more than half a century, now at the age of 84 creates a voice that has been seeking nostos for many more than the 20 years endured by Odysseus. Moreover, he closes “Mother of Muses” with the line “I’m traveling light and I’m slow coming home,” continuing a form of what I have elsewhere called “window reference,” in this case through the Odyssean window to Cavafy’s great “Ithaka.” Late in his career Bob Dylan has become the inheritor of the Odyssey in more ways than one.


Emily Baragwanath shared that Vivienne Gray, Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Auckland, died in Auckland on 9th June 2025.  Vivienne was known particularly for her work on Xenophon, which included The Character of Xenophon's ‘Hellenica’ (Duckworth, 1989), The Framing of Socrates: the Literary Interpretation of Xenophon's ‘Memorabilia’ (Steiner, 1998), Xenophon on Government (CUP, 2007), Xenophon: Oxford Readings in Classical Studies (edited collection; OUP, 2010), and Xenophon's Mirror of Princes: Reading the Reflections (OUP, 2011). Vivienne's work took her to New Hall, Cambridge, as a PhD student, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, as a Rhodes Visiting Fellow. Vivienne pursued the rest of her career in Auckland, where she guided her students to read Greek and Latin texts closely and intelligently, and made a particular contribution (especially through her great love of Herodotus) to the diaspora of New Zealand scholars as she encouraged her students to spread their wings. The energy Vivienne brought to her classes and research concealed the fact that she had leukaemia for over 25 years; an illness which, as one former student has said, she met with "the utmost dignity and steely resolve". 

Three panels of papers to honour Vivienne (Continuing the Conversations: in Honour of Professor Vivienne Gray) will be presented at the first day of the Australasian Society of Classical Studies annual conference, 2-5 February, 2026, in Auckland, New Zealand, as noted above.
​
More details on Professor Gray’s life, scholarship and mentoring of her students will be added to this blog by Jessica Priestley later this year.  ​