Ancient World Seminar: Sofie Remijssen (University of Amsterdam) (Time & Temporalities Network) "The introduction of clock time in the Hellenistic era"

Abstract

By the mid-second century BC, clock time was widely known in the Greco-Roman world: from Rome to Bactria, from rulers to men of modest means. The swift diffusion of this concept is a striking phenomenon: clock time is an abstract and arbitrary idea to live by. For centuries, people had lived perfectly well without chopping up the day into equal pieces, and without clocks to identify these. This lecture will explore how the idea of clock time gradually took shape in the last decades of the fourth century and how its uses were successfully communicated to a diverse and widely spread group of people in the early Hellenistic period.

About the speaker

Dr. Sofie Remijsen is an Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Amsterdam, specializing in the culture and society of the Roman Empire, particularly in Late Antiquity. Her research focuses on sports and games, Egyptian papyri, calendars, and the cultural perceptions of time. She earned her M.A. in Ancient History from KU Leuven in 2006 and completed her Ph.D. there in 2012. Before joining the University of Amsterdam in 2017, she was a Junior Professor of Ancient History at the University of Mannheim. Her notable publications include The End of Greek Athletics in Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and articles on ancient athletics, timekeeping, and the role of Greek identity in panhellenic competitions.