General Presentation
Our European culture is inextricably bound up with the heritage of the ancient Greek and Roman culture. In order to understand our present and also to work out our future it is unavoidable to contemplate our beginnings. The Greek and Roman heritage is still present with us in form of written texts transmitted in a long process of history. Therefore the exhortation of Erasmus, one of the chief representatives of European humanism, „Ad fontes!” (To the origins/fountains!) is still actual and could be read as a motto of our Intitute. We are a bunch of people not so old, but all aware of the presence of the ancient heritage in our life and enthusiastic about transmitting it to younger people. Our means to do this is teaching the classical (whence the name of the studies „Classics”) languages (both Greek and Latin) and presenting some methods which make possible to approach a remote culture and silent texts. Let them become near and talkative, because they are ours! Ad fontes!
Our Staff
Head of the Institute:
László Takács PhD, associate professor
takacs.laszlo@btk.ppke.hu
Research interest: Latin literature, Literature of the Claudian-Flavian era, Nero and his literary „friends”, Ancient biographies and exegetic scholia, Literary criticism and commentaries, ancient and modern
Teaching activity: All kind of courses about Latin literature, its transmission and interpretation across the ages
Fellows of the Institute:
Elvira Pataki PhD, associate professor
pataki.elvira@btk.ppke.hu
Research interest: Greek literature (but also some Latin), Greek Religion and Mythology, Literature of the Hellenistic Age, Metapoetics in Greek Literature, Reception of Latin (and Greek) literature in French culture
Teaching activity: All kind of courses about Greek literature and its reception, Close-reading seminars in a great variety of texts and genres
Gyula Mayer PhD, associate professor
mayer.gyula@btk.ppke.hu
Research interest: Greek Science (Eucleides, Archimedes and Greek „Mathematics”), Greek Historical Linguistics, Greek Epigraphy
Teaching activity: Introduction into Indoeuropean Linguistics, Close-reading seminars in Greek dialects, epigraphic documents, legal texts, medieval Latin literature (Ianus Pannonius)
Zsolt Adorjáni PhD, assistant professor
adorjani.zsolt@btk.ppke.hu
Research interest: Poetry of the Archaic Age (mainly choral lyric and Pindar) and of the Hellenistic period (chiefly Callimachus), reception of the Greek literature in German culture (Goethe, Hölderlin)
Teaching activity: Language courses of Greek and Latin, Exercises in Greek and Latin grammar and style, Propaedeutics in Textual Criticism
If you are interested in some of the issues listed above, we are happy to hear about you. For further questions and queries please contact Zsolt Adorjáni, Erasmus Coordinator of the Institute!
