Every Thursday this year, an intrepid group of ancient Greek enthusiasts have gathered in Princeton’s Classics Department for Homer Reading Group, an extracurricular chance for beginners and world experts alike to engage in collaborative close readings of antiquity’s most famous bard. Led by linguist Prof. Jesse Lundquist, the weekly pizza party has tackled two of the most famous passages in epic—the death of Patroclus in Iliad 16 and the cave of Polyphemus in Odyssey 9.

“It came about when I said, ‘How about we run a Homeric reading group?’” Lundquist recalled asking Professors Barbara Graziosi and Johannes Haubold, two Homerists in the department. “People would read Greek together, deepen their appreciation of texts, and enjoy it thoroughly. What did I hope would happen? I hoped, simply, that people would come!”

As the three of them were pleased to discover, people came.

“The best part is that it’s everybody,” said Graziosi, who chairs the department and has written several books on Homer. “Grad students, undergrads, faculty, college staff not even in our department, all coming together to read this thing. Even—miracle of miracles—the Latinists!”

One such Latinist is Prof. Ilaria Marchesi. “I absolutely love it," she said. "No grading pressure, no hierarchy. Just a group united by a shared passion for these texts. This is the university at its best.”

Graduate student Grace DeAngelis likewise leapt at the chance to gain scholarly depth from outside her field.

“Because Homeric epic poetry underlies so much of Latin literature, my weekly encounters with the Odyssey are invaluable for my research,” she said. “As a Latinist, I especially cherish the opportunity to deepen my appreciation for the beauty of Homeric Greek and learn from my colleagues' expertise.”

Each week, a volunteer reader begins by reading aloud and translating a short passage. The floor then opens to specific questions on grammar and finally broader literary and cultural discussions. For undergraduate participants, like Elinor Detmer ’26, it is a special experience to work with professors as peers.

“Getting to spend time with faculty and graduate students who are all equally willing to take on the inquisitive posture of students, even while sharing their expertise, has been immensely rewarding,” said Detmer. “It’s been a highlight of my time at Princeton.”

“As a lost classicist, I always yearn for Ithaca,” agreed Dr. Matt Newman, Assistant Dean for Studies at Whitman College, who holds a doctorate in Classical Studies from the University of Michigan. “To join together with the positively brilliant crew of faculty and students reading Homer each Thursday, with Jesse by equal measures of sensibility and audacity piloting us onward, I feel, even if only briefly, that home is just around the bend, and that’s precious.”

To Marchesi, who directs the department’s language program, experiences like Detmer’s and Dean Newman’s show the potential of informal learning environments. (Even if, as an Italian native, she is skeptical of that environment’s pizza toppings.)

“In many ways, I wish all our classes could follow this format,” she said. “A mix of undergraduates, graduate students, and professors coming together to read a text for the sheer pleasure of it, sharing thoughts on whatever strikes them as interesting, puzzling, or noteworthy—all while sampling the most absurd combinations of condiments on pretend-Italian pizza.”

Lundquist will spend the next year on leave sponsored by a prestigious Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship but plans “to fire up the group again” when he returns. The group’s nóstos (‘homecoming’) is slated for 2026.

“Some parts of scholarly life are work in the sense that they are laborious,” Lundquist said. “By contrast, reading Ancient Greek texts in a community of friends and colleagues has always been for me the work that is also a pleasure.”