The Centre for Classical Studies warmly invites you to attend the the Classics Seminar Series to be held in Semester 2. After the talk in G41, we shall continue discussion in the ANU Classics Museum over light refreshments.

Why did every Greek polis aspire to have a gymnasium of its own, an expensive complex to build and costly to run and maintain? Where was it ideally situated, and what functions did such an institution perform? And who were eligible to participate? Why did non-Greeks/ Barbaroi/Xenoi find such an institution bizarre and alien? Why, then, do we find at Hellenistic Jebel Khalid, situated remotely on the Middle Euphrates in North Syria, one of the first Public Buildings to be erected a Palaestra in the third century BCE?

Emeritus Professor Graeme Clarke was a Director of the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU from 1981 to 1999, having been previously Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Melbourne. He has been a Director of Excavations at Jebel Khalid since 1986.

[Photo: aerial view of Jebel Khalid]