Hi there, you're listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast.

And on this episode, we are going to do something a little different.

Once in a while, we will be doing interviews with specialists in the realm of all things Hellenistic and beyond

to gain insights about recent developments in the field and anything

I believe you would all find very interesting. I have had the privilege to be able to speak with

Dr. Thomas Coward, a specialist in Greek literature and poetry, who has been delving into the realm

of the island city state of Rhodes, which became quite powerful during the Hellenistic period as a

political power and a center of high cultural intellectual importance. So without further ado,

let us begin the discussion. Hello everyone. Today with me, I have classicist, historian, and specialist in ancient Greek literature, Dr. Thomas Coward at Kauff Oskarri University of Venice.

First off, I'd like to thank you for coming on the show.

Oh, thank you for having me.

So, Dr. Coward, can you please give us a background of your studies? What led you to migrate from the UK

all the way to Venice and back? So I did my PhD on Greek poetry and music in 2000, and I completed

in 2016. From there, I developed during that time another project which was on how Greek poetry, particular Greek lyric and Greek tragedy interacted with one another.

And during that conference I organized on that topic, I presented a paper which proposed what the music was for a play by Iskoulos.

And my main source for this was a comment by a Rhodian poet scholar called Timakidas, who said it was performed to this particular mode.

And subsequently, I realized there was more work to be done on this man, and I presented

work on him in Venice during my PhD. I sort of introduced who he was and described his

activities. He worked on drama, etymology, grammar, rhetoric.

He wrote poetry on dining, customs of dining, anthropology kind of approach to things.

And he also co-wrote what is known as the Lydian Chronicle.

It's a useful and interesting inscription found on Lindos on Rose, and the inscription now is in Copenhagen.

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