Ancient Greece and Rome have traditionally been and continue to be sources of inspiration and a kind of global catalog of ideas, art samples, images, and ideals. But how do we actually learn about the life of Ancient Greece and Rome? The next public lecture, organized by the E-Center, will focus on how classical philologists and historians of antiquity bit by bit isolate and interpret information about the private life of the Greeks and Romans – their fashion, menus, customs, superstitions – combining data from literary texts, archaeological findings, and works of art. What details of everyday life do contemporaries capture, and which ones escape their attention? How does our perception distort what is familiar to us? How and why do poets and artists modify the reality around them? Is it possible in these circumstances to push through to perfect knowledge?

The lecture will be presented by Vsevolod Zelchenko, a classical philologist, candidate of philological sciences, researcher at the Matenadaran and the St. Petersburg Bibliotheca Classica. The lecture will be held at E-center (Yerevan, 31/4 Charents str.), in Russian.