Donald Russell Memorial Lecture 2025: 'Mesomedes and his fans'

The Cretan poet Mesomedes, who sang his compositions while accompanying himself on a stringed instrument, was a great success in his lifetime. He is said to have been a close friend of the emperor Hadrian, and three of his poems have been transmitted with musical notation, probably because they were used to teach music in later antiquity and Byzantium. They and the other 10 poems attributed to Mesomedes are valuable records of the nature of the poetry sung to the lyre or to the cithara by some of the most highly rewarded category of musicians in the high Roman empire – metrically simple, but not always simple in thought or expression. The lecture will explore Mesomedes' origins and poetic choices and assess his impact.

The lecture series has been established by the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford to celebrate and honour the contribution of Professor Donald Russell FBA (1920-2020) to the discipline of Classics, and his exceptionally generous support for Classics at St John’s, and is dedicated to the fields of Classical studies in which he had particular interest, including the art of Greek and Latin prose, rhetoric and imperial Greek literature.