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Newsletter: Winter 2025
10 March 2025
Welcome to the Winter edition of Europa Ciceroniana’s Newsletter!
Every two months, our team will update you on the latest developments regarding our project. Of course, we will also look forward to upcoming events. Do you wish to receive these updates in your personal mailbox? Sign up using this form. Your address will not be shared or used for other purposes.
🇫🇷🏛️ Paris Convention
We look back on a successful international convention organized by the Sorbonne Université in Paris. A special word of gratitude goes out to our partner dr. Charles Guérin and his colleagues for organizing such a wonderful event.
During this intensive three-day convention, researchers, teachers, and students of Cicero from five different countries (France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, the Netherlands) came together in order to exchange their ideas about Cicero’s Pro Archia. The main objective of this convention was to take the first steps towards an online, international commentary on this text.
After a warm welcome by means of a lunch buffet at the Sorbonne, the convention was kicked off with a plenary session during which all five national teams presented a different paragraph of the Pro Archia. Departing from this paragraph of choice, the partners shared their personal connection with the Pro Archia, while at the same time highlighting its significance for Europe’s cultural identity, both in the past and present – and, with the help of this project: in the future.
Following these introductory presentations, all attendees were divided into groups consisting of researchers, students and teachers of all five nationalities. Guided by the first drafts of national commentaries, these groups discussed a set of Pro Archia-paragraphs in light of a possible multilingual, international commentary. Afterwards, all groups would come together in a plenary session in order to compare their findings.
This interchange of group work and plenary sessions would be continued during the next two days. An inspiring and fruitful exercise it turned out to be. Different national traditions excitingly provide different perspectives on the same text. However, different national traditions also require different approaches. For instance, entries relevant to a student of Latin from The Netherlands are not always as relevant to a student of Latin from Italy – and vice versa.
During the closing plenary session, challenges of this nature were discussed. We explored the requirements and possibilities of the online environment that should ultimately host our multilingual commentary. Taking existing online commentaries like cicerogaatverder.nl and joyceproject.com as examples, we debated a tripartite division (language, rhetoric, content), colour-coding, hyperlinking, drop-down menus, mobile device readability, etcetera. Moving forward, the possible implementability of these ideas will be of great importance.
At the end of every long day, there was still enough time to get to know one another during the buffets at the Sorbonne and a closing lunch in the centre of Paris. More often than not, however, vigorous discussion about Cicero’s Pro Archia continued. Even when the meals had already been served.
🇸🇮🇳🇱 Meet the Slovenian and Dutch teams
The Slovenian and Dutch teams introduce themselves on their respective pages. They can be found as subheadings under the tab called 'Project'. We are glad to have those pages finalized and hope to present the remaining national teams soon!
