To which classical figure do you most relate and why? Demosthenes. Through his speeches we can see, feel, touch and experience the reality of democracy, which now is upheld by many nations of the world, but is not easy, as Aristotle remarked, to keep going on well. When did you know you wanted to be a classicist? When I was enchanted by the splendor of Greek grammar which functions to express things with such precision, clarity and elegance. Its system is totally different from that of Japanese, an agglutinative and my native language. Who has been the most important mentor in your career? My high school teacher who taught me how to read Japanese and Chinese classics. What book has been most influential to your career? Sophocles' Oedipus Rex which I first read in Japanese translation and finally in original Greek. Even now, my heart beats fast at the scene where the servant tells Oedipus that the baby he was to abandon was Laius' son. What trend in Classical Studies do you see as positive? Reception theory. What book are you currently reading? The critical essays of Dionysius of Halicarnassus who was a Greek teacher of declamation living in Rome under the rule of Augustus. What literary character do you most resemble? Don Quixote. Summarize yourself in the title of a Classics paper. Entrapped by the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece.

Akiko Kiso is a Professor Emerita of Classics at Osaka University in Japan. Prof. Kiso is the winner of AbleMedia's Gold, Silver, and Bronze Chalice awards for her submission of What Happened to Deus ex Machina after Euripides?. If you could travel back to ancient Rome, what five items would you take with you from the present? Coffee, glasses, soaps, t-shirt, jeans. What is the best advice you have ever received? A person must know when to give up. When and where in the Classical World would you have liked to live? When Phidias' sculptures and Zeuxis' paintings still existed. What would have you become if not a Classicist? Embroidery worker. If it were possible, with whom, dead or alive, from the world outside of Classical Studies would you like to have dinner? Professor Henry Higgins of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. I would enjoy his conversation together with the good/bad table manner of this self-professed misogynist. What law, rule, event, or custom from Classical times would you like to see reincarnated today? Olympic games. I once visited the stadium in Olympia, when young athletes competing for the honor of a laurel crown appeared in my vision. What is one thing about Classical Studies you wished your students understood? That the study makes you rich in a way no money can. What would be the title of your autobiography? Vanished like a dream. If it were possible, with whom, dead or alive, from Classical times would you want to deliver your eulogy? To Aeschylus, for his creativity in tragic art and his patriotic devotion in the time of war.