From the Beginning to the End of Civilizations
Scott Farrington in his office in East College, home to the Department of Classical Studies. Photo by Dan Loh.
OFFICE HOURS: Scott Farrington, Associate Professor of Classical Studies
by Tony Moore
Associate Professor of Classical Studies Scott Farrington earned his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado-Boulder. His publications include “What a Feeling! Painting and the Origin of ‘Nothing to Do With Dionysus’ ” and The Art of History: Literary Perspectives on Greek and Roman Historiography (ed.). He teaches such classes as Lyric & Elegy and Roman History.
In a world of trends, viral posts and other modern dreck, the classics endure. What about Dickinson makes it a standout undergrad choice for diving into those enduring stories?
Dickinson is a standout choice for studying classics because of the many exceptional opportunities that we offer our students. In the first place, we offer programs of study in Ancient Greek, Latin and classical studies. These options leave all postgraduation doors open for our students, whether that’s graduate study in the classics or whether that’s a path like law school or medical school or moving directly into the professional world. We have robust offerings—Latin and Greek from the beginning to the advanced level, courses in Greek and Roman civilization, public speaking and classical mythology—that complement any number of majors and minors across the college, including history, philosophy, religion, law, justice & society and archaeology. The Roberts Fund for Classical Studies allows us to bring special guests like A. E. Stallings, the Oxford professor of poetry, and Robert Schwentke, writer and director of Seneca: On the Invention of Earthquakes to campus to meet our students. Additionally, the Roberts Fund supports student travel to locations related to the ancient world, and it helps subsidize our department’s two globally integrated courses: Roman History and Greek History. Finally, we are the home of Dickinson College Commentaries, and we frequently employ students to help develop content for those commentaries. In my opinion, we offer students as diverse a set of opportunities for study, travel and work as any elite institution in the country.
Recently you wrote an article (re?)interpreting the ancient proverb “Nothing to do with Dionysus.” Naturally I have no idea what that means, so I’ll bite: What’s it about, and what drew you to it?
The Greek historian Polybius records that Roman soldiers looted a painting of Dionysus that Polybius says inspired a proverb “Nothing to do with Dionysus.” Several painters each produced a portrait of Dionysus for a competition, and this painting was so superior to the others that the judges complained, “These other paintings have nothing to do with Dionysus.” Interestingly, other ancient authors explain the origin of the same proverb, but they argue that disgruntled theatergoers heckled plays in which Dionysus was not a character and had “Nothing to do with Dionysus.” I researched ancient painters and painting contests to argue that Polybius’s explanation is the more plausible one. What seals it for me is a story that in fact has nothing to do with Dionysus: Plutarch records that a man named Parmeno was renowned for his ability to make pig noises. A rival pig imitator challenged Parmeno to a duel. A cheater, he hid a live pig under his robes, but the crowd voted for Parmeno’s imitation anyway. After the rival revealed the live pig under his cloak, someone shouted, “Fine! But that has nothing to do with Parmeno’s pig.” The live pig did not produce the same astonishment as Parmeno’s simulation. The story—and consequently the proverb—reveals elements of ancient attitudes toward art; namely, that even naturalistic art does more than reproduce reality. It produces wonder through imitation. We all know that a pig sounds like a pig, but Parmeno (like the painting) is a marvel.
What might students, and those in the wider world, uncover in studying the ancients that might surprise them and turn out to be (maybe surprisingly) useful here in 2025?
When we study classics, we study entire civilizations. We study them from the earliest hints of their beginnings through their ends to the traces they left in the civilizations that followed. We study their languages, their religions, their stories, their families, their heroes, their villains, their loves, their hates, their allies, their enemies, their economies, their governments, their laws, their sexuality, their glory and their shame. They were artists, scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, architects, lawyers, politicians, doctors, soldiers, engineers, actors, musicians, historians, poets, dancers, merchants, rich, poor, fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives. We study the choices they made, the leaders they chose to follow and where those leaders took them. We study how they treated one another. Julius Caesar, ultimately the most powerful and privileged man in his world, started unprovoked military campaigns in Spain to raise money to pay his personal debts. Later, he was responsible for the deaths of perhaps a million Gauls and the enslavement of perhaps a million more. He started a civil war because, as he explains, his dignity had been insulted. He even gave the order to start a fire that burned the library at Alexandria. But even Caesar could not remove from the world all the humanistic achievements of literature, art, architecture and intellectual discovery that antiquity had produced. When we study the ancient world, we study what has persisted, and what will persist, for better and for worse.
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Published December 22, 2025