Department of Classical Studies

• Ancient Greek literature and culture
• Homeric epic
• Homeric scholia
• Ancient Greek literary criticism

My research explores Homeric epic and its reception in antiquity, particularly in the realm of ancient scholarship. In recent years, I have been particularly focused on the ancient scholia to the Iliad, one of the richest and most substantial collections of ancient literary scholarship we possess. In 2021, I co-edited The Ancient Scholia to Homer’s Iliad: Exegesis and Interpretation (Oxford), which considers ancient Homeric scholarship both in its own contexts and through its refractions in intellectual history. In an effort to make the Iliad’s scholia accessible to wider audiences, I produced a translation of the scholia to Iliad books 1-2, which will be published as The Ancient Scholia to Homer’s Iliad: A Translation, vol. 1, Books 1-2 (Cambridge). This is to be the first installment of a three-volume series that I am co-editing with Adrian Kelly (Oxford), Oliver Thomas (Nottingham), and Tom Phillips (Manchester). My exploration of ancient Homeric scholarship has also led me to challenge ideas that have become entrenched in modern scholarship on Homer. A 2020 article challenges the Cretan Odyssey theory by reassessing the scholiastic evidence used to support it. A 2022 article examines Zeus’ attitude toward humans in the Iliad and questions the standard interpretation of Iliad 20.21. Finally, a 2023 article critiques a pervasive old idea about the Iliad’s depiction of the myth of Troilos. My current book project, The Narrative of the Iliad: Time, Space, and Story, represents a return to my longstanding interest in the representation of space and time in ancient Greco-Roman narrative literature. This book explores the narrator’s representation of the Iliad’s story in time and space, and argues that the audience’s partial and piecemeal experience of the Iliad’s story belies the narrator’s synoptic sense of both the story and the narrative that represents it. Links to several of my publications can be found here.

• Ancient Greek Culture
• Readings in the Greek Novel
• Homer/Readings in Greek Epic
• Classical Epics
• Intermediate Greek
• Survey of Greek Literature
• Classical Mythology
• Greek Literature in Translation
• Classical Drama

Books

The Ancient Scholia to Homer’s Iliad: A Translation (Cambridge, forthcoming).

The Ancient Scholia to Homer’s Iliad: Exegesis and Interpretation, BICS. 2021. Co-edited with Adrian Kelly and Tom Phillips.

Articles and Book Chapters

“How Did Homer’s Troilus Die?” Classical Quarterly. Forthcoming.

“Homer’s Verbal Mimesis in the Iliad’s Exegetical Scholia.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 63 (2023) 78–102.

“Harshing Zeus’ μέλω: Reassessing the Sympathy of Zeus at Iliad 20.21.” AJP (2022).

“Doorways and Diegesis: Spatial and Narrative Boundaries in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.” CP (2022): 706–19.

“Reading for Achilles in the bT-Scholia to the Iliad,” in B. Beck, A. Kelly, and T. Phillips (eds) The Ancient Scholia to Homer’s Iliad: Exegesis and Interpretation (2021): 48–58.

“Reassessing the Scholiastic Evidence for the Cretan Odyssey Theory.” TAPA (2020): 357–78.

“Lost in the Middle: Story Time and Discourse Time in the Iliad.” Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic (2017): 46–64.

“Causas Memora: Epic Etiology and Vergil’s Aeneid.” Vergilius 62 (2016): 57–78.

“Lost in the Middle: Story Time and Discourse Time in the Iliad.” Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic (2017): 46-64.

“Causas Memora: Epic Etiology and Vergil’s Aeneid.” Vergilius 62 (2016): 57-78.