Recorded: April 25, 2018
Event: Ancient Persia and the West, An International Symposium
Citation: Nabel, Jake. "Fish out of Water: Greek Deportees, Persian Empires, and the Classical Mediterranean," Ancient Persia and the West, An International Symposium. April 25, 2018
by Jake Nabel (Getty Villa Scholar)
About the Speaker
Nabel’s research centers on interstate affairs between the early Principate and the Parthian empire, Rome’s imperial peer on the Iranian plateau, but he also maintain active interests in Latin literature, the Hellenistic East, and Sasanian history. In all his work, he draws on both Greco-Roman literary texts and Near Eastern sources to promote the fuller integration of ancient Persia into the study of the classical Mediterranean. In the classroom, he helps students put Roman and Near Eastern history in dialogue with one another and with the historiographic mainstream, combining close readings of primary sources with comparative treatments of topics like political institutions, trade, and slavery. He also enjoys teaching the Greek and Latin texts at the heart of the classical tradition, especially historians like Thucydides and Tacitus. His interest in Near Eastern sources and in the digital humanities led to my creation of Parthian Sources Online (parthiansources.com), a digital collection of texts for the study of the Parthian empire.