In this note, I highlight a hitherto unrecognized literary resonance in the climactic final verses of Archilochus’ First Cologne Epode: Archilochus parodically and subversively reworks the Homeric description of a quivering spear. This Homeric resonance caps the poem’s ongoing clash between the generic conventions of epic and iambus, while also…[Read more]

In this paper, I investigate the repetition of Homeric hapax legomena in archaic and classical Greek poetry. Scholars frequently assume that fine-grained engagement with Homeric rarities is a distinctive feature of the Hellenistic period, but I reveal the significant precedent for this phenomenon in earlier poetry. Proceeding through comedy,…[Read more]

This paper seeks to shed fresh light on the aesthetic and stylistic affiliations of Lycophron’s Alexandra, approaching the poem from two distinct but complementary angles. First, it explores what can be gained by reading Lycophron’s poem against the backdrop of Callimachus’ poetry. It contends that the Alexandra presents a radical and polem…[Read more]

In this paper, I investigate how Ptolemaic poets’ presentation of their queens compares with and relates to the practice of their major rivals, the Seleucids. No poetic celebration of a Seleucid queen survives extant, but an anecdote preserved by Lucian sheds intriguing light on Seleucid poetic practice (Pro Imaginibus 5): queen Stratonice, bald…[Read more]

In this article for sixth-formers and school teachers, I explore the story of Achilles’ heel and Homer’s likely suppression of the myth in the Iliad. Homer’s Iliad appears to acknowledge, but simultaneously reject, an alternative tradition in which Achilles was more than mortal, part of a broader downplaying of heroic invulnerability and…[Read more]

The course provides an extensive survey of the archaeology of the Roman world, as well as an introduction to archaeological methods. Students will acquire the analytical skills necessary to interpret material culture and learn how to use archaeological remains to reconstruct various aspects of ancient societies. Emphasis for this class is on the…[Read more]

This graduate seminar approaches the urban and rural landscapes of peninsular Italy from the Early Iron Age until the Gothic Wars, with the goal being to examine key points of intersection (and departure) between the spheres of ‘town’ and ‘country’. In adopting an holistic approach to these categories that are often juxtaposed, the seminar…[Read more]

This graduate seminar approaches the urban and rural landscapes of peninsular Italy from the Early Iron Age until the Gothic Wars, with the goal being to examine key points of intersection (and departure) between the spheres of ‘town’ and ‘country’. In adopting an holistic approach to these categories that are often juxtaposed, the seminar…[Read more]

This graduate seminar approaches the urban and rural landscapes of peninsular Italy from the Early Iron Age until the Gothic Wars, with the goal being to examine key points of intersection (and departure) between the spheres of ‘town’ and ‘country’. In adopting an holistic approach to these categories that are often juxtaposed, the seminar…[Read more]

Troy has long captured the human imagination. The story of its fall and the tales of both its inhabitants and besiegers have caught the attention of artists and their audiences from antiquity to post-modernity. It seems we are drawn to the struggle that is Troy and the Trojan War, to the paragons of virtue, and the archetypes of other, less noble…[Read more]