This chapter examines the impact of a putative oral Homer upon the work of recent performance-makers. The influence of oral-poetic theories is (as yet) an under-explored area of study, neglected by scholars whose literary expertise leads them to focus on dramatic texts and production histories, with each revisionary text or production regarded as…[Read more]

This paper argues that the Augustan period witnessed a dramatic reconception of Roman religion—a reconception that played a vital role in the emperor’s efforts to create a unified sense of identity that included both Romans and Italians. Instead of a religion of place tied to specific historical developments, both Virgil in the Aeneid and A…[Read more]

A paper of 17 pages as described in its title and opening lines. “Hoa Hakananai’a” is an Easter Island statue, now in the British Museum. For “Linear and cult art”, see The Problem with Linear B (https://hcommons-staging.org/deposits/item/hc:20833/

This essay examines Giambattista Vico’s philology as a contribution to democratic legitimacy. I outline three steps in Vico’s account of the historical and political development of philological knowledge: first, his merger of philosophy and philology, and the effects of that merger on the relative claims of reason and authority; second, his use…[Read more]

Whilst “The Problem with Linear B” (https://hcommons-staging.org/deposits/item/hc:20833/) focused on the physical or visual aspects of Linear objects, this paper mainly examines the secondary assumptions and arguments used to support the thesis that those objects are purely administrative.

A 5-page paper discussing the Linear signage and visual aspects of a Linear B tablet from Thebes, Greece, apparently discovered in the 1990s.

Review of C. Tsagalis (ed.), “Poetry in Fragments: Studies on the Hesiodic Corpus and its Afterlife.” Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes, 50. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2017

Notice of (D.) Sider (ed.) Hellenistic Poetry. A Selection. Pp. xx + 579, ills. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Paper, US$49.50 (Cased, US$90). ISBN: 978-0-472-05313-1 (978-0-472-07313-9 hbk).

The significance and influence of Attic drama on Hellenistic poetry has been a topic of little consistent focus in recent scholarship, reflecting the dominant academic emphasis on Hellenistic poetry as a written artefact, allegedly detached from any immediate context of performance. This paper attempts to reverse this trend by setting out the…[Read more]

Drawing on rabbinic sources redacted in the early third and late fourth/ early fifth centuries, this paper tracks the intertwined lives of divine image-things and rabbis living in late Roman and Byzantine period Palestine. The paper argues that the religious image-things of others (or avodah zarah, in rabbinic terms) pressed in different ways on…[Read more]

The book demonstrates the invalidity of existing assumptions about the administrative nature of Linear B (“Mycenaean Greek”) and related objects, proposes an alternative revolving around cult art, and explores similar evidence relating to scripts and art from the same and other regions and periods.

In the libraries of Celsus at Ephesus and of Rogatianus at Timgad, the function of which is attested by inscriptions, bookcases are usually reconstructed in the niches. These examples have been used to identify other buildings which contained niches as libraries. However, Lora Johnson, in her 1984 Ph.D. thesis, rightfully questioned such an…[Read more]

This report presents preliminary results of experimental archaeological investigations on the reproduction of the Roman porridge puls. The archaeological experiment “LNF2012” was performed under laboratory conditions as part of the “Lange Nacht der Forschung” 2012 on April 27, at the Department of Classical Archaeology of the University of Vie…[Read more]

This is a combined museum catalogue entry discussing coins from ancient Egypt.

These are the slides from a talk given at the JACT Summer School, Bryanston, on 1/8/2018.
How did ancient Greek writers and poets use imaginary cities to think about how to live well, what kind of community to develop, and how to maintain relationships between individual, community and cosmos? From Homer to Aristotle, the imaginary city provides…[Read more]

These slides accompany my talk ‘The Fragility of Democracy’, presented at the Faculty of Classics, Oxford Open Day, 27th June 2018, and also at other venues and events.

An essay on the Greeks in Egypt during the Archaic and Classical periods.

The resemblance between the Gospel story about Jesus stilling a storm in the Sea of Galilee (Mt. 8:18, 23-27, Mk. 4:35-41, Lk. 8:22-25) and the Jonah story (Jon. 1:1-16) has been long acknowledged by scholars. This article contends that since the relations between the two stories are those of polar opposition, it should be possible, by way of…[Read more]

Review of Jenny Strauss Clay, Irad Malkin, Yannis Z. Tzifopoulos (ed.), Panhellenes at Methone: graphê in Late Geometric and Protoarchaic Methone.
Trends in classics – supplementary volumes, 44 .

During most of Antiquity, the Greek-speaking kingdoms in Cyprus used syllabic writing systems for the Cypriot dialect. Paphos, which was one of the most powerful kingdoms in the island, used a special variant of the Cypriot syllabary. Although the circumstances seemed to favour the adoption of the Greek alphabet as a writing system, the Paphians…[Read more]