Ephebeia, Spring 2026

Read the second issue of the Paideia Institute's youth Classics journal.

As the second issue of Ephebeia goes into metaphorical print, it's a second chance for me to reflect on what's in store for you, and where Classics as a discipline could be going. If these essays are a guide, it's a promising direction.

The first thing that struck me as I reflected on our choices was how relevant these essays make Classics feel. Ryan Wu offers a take on the Hippocratic Corpus as being in tune with cutting-edge contemporary approaches to medicine, especially the need to find more holistic and lifestyle-oriented approaches to health. Ancient writings on medicine become less a historical curiosity and more an aid to our own imaginations as we rethink our relationship to our bodies. In place of the already tired stories of the dangers AI poses to traditional study and writing about the ancient world, Jacob Wu turns this on its head; he offers instead a reading of Plato, especially Plato on the dangers of the technology of writing, that can help us think through helpful and unhelpful ways to come to terms with this new technology. Alex Mir examines how Nazi rejection of 'degenerate art' was linked to classicizing ideals, and tries to come to terms with how easily classicism has been adopted by far-right movements. Lastly, Shriram Rajagopal analyzes a little-known text, 'The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea' to give a sense of the mercantile dynamism, linked to economies of knowledge, that must have been a crucial part of Roman Imperial expansion.

If these essays all try to help us see Classics in a new way, we have also found space for more traditional, though creative, literary criticism. Isabelle Chiang revisits Ovid's Medea of Metamorphoses 7, and helps us see just how exceptional this upstart female hero is, and how Ovid negotiates her turning of the gendered tables. Ezra Stone offers answers to the ideology that motivates Virgil's Aeneid by reading the poem as a 'song', a genre that flirts with authority but also deception. Ultimately, he argues it is most helpful to see the poem itself as close to 'Fama', or rumor, self-consciously in between fact and fiction. What perhaps links all the essays is their ambition, even daring, in looking at texts, both unfamiliar and familiar, in new ways.

Mark Buchan
Editor, In Medias Res

Students who would like to submit an essay to the Fall 2026 issue of Ephebeia should fill out this interest form. We will reach out with submission guidelines in early September.