Ephebeia, Fall 2025

Read the inaugural edition of the Paideia Institute's youth Classics journal.

When the editorial team at In Medias Res decided to create an online journal dedicated to the writing of high-school students, we were not entirely sure how much interest it would generate. Prompted by a steady stream of inquiries from students (and their teachers) over the last couple of years about whether we published the work of the current generation of ephebes, our stock answer––that we did, but we held it to the same standards as other submissions––seemed a little unfair. And so the idea of ‘Ephebeia’ was born, a deadline for submissions was set, and we nervously waited. Since then, we have been a little overwhelmed, albeit pleasantly overwhelmed, not only by the essays that have flooded the IMR inbox, but by the enthusiastic emails of students, teachers, and parents asking us about the journal. As we publish the first issue, we wanted to thank everyone for their interest, for the email conversations about classical antiquity they have started, and for helping us be more in touch with the genuine curiosity and intellectual excitement the world of Latin and Ancient Greek still generates. Reading the submissions felt like looking through a small window into the future of the field; I am delighted to say that the future looks very bright.

We had hoped we would find some thematic overlap in the strongest essays, and as it turns out, all four essays are part of ‘Reception Studies’, mapping the way ideas from antiquity have produced a fascinating afterlife, used and abused alike by later thinkers. Sophie Chen considers how Julius Caesar’s ethnographic writing on the Gauls is used to formulate exclusionary arguments in early human rights law on what groups deserve the title of ‘human.’ Caleb Smith looks at the way one founding father grappled with the reasons for the fall of the Roman Republic as a way of framing a US constitution that could protect itself against the upheavals of class struggle. Justin Tan traces how a neo-Latin poem composed to celebrate the Apollo 8 space mission consciously rewrites the imperialism of Vergil’s Aeneid, while Quinn Joswick ponders the authentic tackiness of Nashville’s Parthenon, and what it tells us about our idealism of ‘the Classics.’ At a time when the entire Humanities is in defensive mode, forever trying to justify its relevance, all these essays take on that challenge head-on.

Mark Buchan
Editor, In Medias Res