Classics Trip to Cambridge

On Tuesday the LVIth Classical Civilisation group went on a trip to Cambridge. And while the trip there was an act of patience, we were immediately rewarded with a rather special event as soon as we arrived at the faculty of Classics (Cambridge University). Dr Nigel Spivey, a leading scholar of Greek art, gave us an exclusive talk on his latest project on the subject of archaic female statues. Even though the lecture was pitched at an undergraduate level, pupils easily followed the main ideas and contributed with their own ideas and subject knowledge.

We spent the afternoon in museum of the faculty of Classics where we could find almost all statues that are part of the course in the plaster-cast gallery. We were surprised by the fact that most statues were much taller in reality than they appear to be in the pictures that we normally look at and study. Students also enjoyed the chance to enact the “dying soldier” from the Aphai temple in Aegina. It was a great experience to be able to stand in the middle of the most famous pieces of Greek art, to be able to look at each piece from every angle, to spot every little detail, and eventually to understand the high-powered craftsmanship of ancient Greek artists.

JAS