Publications

Below is a list of my published and forthcoming work. For more information about my current and past research, including copies of talk handouts and abstracts, please see my academia.edu profile page. If you would like a copy of any of these publications, please do send me an email.

Books

(2) The Hellenistic Epic Fragments: Edition, Translation, and Commentary [in progress]

(1) Markers of Allusion in Archaic Greek Poetry. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) [2023, forthcoming]

• ​Challenging established narratives of literary history, this book investigates how the earliest known Greek poets (seventh to fifth centuries BCE) signposted their debts to their predecessors and prior traditions – placing markers in their works for audiences to recognise (much like the ‘Easter eggs’ of modern cinema). Within antiquity, such signposting is usually considered the preserve of later literary cultures, closely linked with the development of libraries, literacy and writing. But I show that these devices were already deeply ingrained in oral archaic Greek poetry, deconstructing the artificial boundary between a supposedly ‘primal’ archaic literature and a supposedly ‘sophisticated’ book culture of Hellenistic Alexandria and Rome. In three interlocking case studies, I highlight how poets from Homer to Pindar employed the language of hearsay, memory and time to index their allusive relationships, as they variously embraced, reworked and challenged their inherited tradition.

Articles

(18) “Early Hellenistic Epic” in M. Perale et al. (eds.) Early Hellenistic Poetry. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) [submitted, forthcoming; author manuscript at academia.edu]

• Little survives of Early Hellenistic Epic, so much so that different scholars have come to opposite conclusions about its significance: for Konrad Ziegler, it was once widespread and plentiful; but for Alan Cameron, it was practically non-existent. The truth of the matter almost certainly lies somewhere between these two extremes. But in this contribution, rather than re-tracing this debate, I analyse the fragmentary scraps and testimonia of early Hellenistic epic from a literary perspective. I explore to what extent these poems appear to have foreshadowed the work of Callimachus and other later Hellenistic poets, especially in their engagement with Homeric scholarship and their treatment of myth (with a particular focus on metamorphosis, aetiology and unheroic, erotic narratives). Many features which we consider distinctively Callimachean are in fact, I argue, already well-established in these early epics, highlighting the broader continuities of Hellenistic literary culture. However, given that many of these same features are also visible centuries earlier in the epics of Homer and the Epic Cycle, I conclude by reassessing how distinctive our criteria for describing 'Hellenistic' or 'Callimachean' poetics actually are.

(17) “Moero of Byzantium” in M. Perale et al. (eds.) Early Hellenistic Poetry. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) [submitted, forthcoming; author manuscript at academia.edu]

• In this chapter, I study Moero of Byzantium as an important predecessor of later Hellenistic poets. I explore Moero’s engagement with scholarly debate, analyse her detailed generic play, and close by considering her possible direct influence on the work of Callimachus and his peers. Moero appears to have foreshadowed key features of Callimachus’ poetics, not only in her approach to myth and genre, but also in her aesthetics and self-styling. Her poetry was learned, allusive and generically experimental; it revelled in scholarly debate, untraditional myths and aetiological narratives; and it may even have foreshadowed the Aetia prologue with a scene of youthful divine inspiration.

(16) “Talk and Text: The Pre-Alexandrian Footnote from Homer to Theodectes”, in A. Kelly & H.L. Spelman (eds.) Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) [submitted, forthcoming] 

• How much continuity was there in the allusive practices of the ancient world? I explore this question here by considering the early Greek precedent for the so-called ‘Alexandrian footnote’, a device often regarded as one of the most learned and bookish in a Roman poet’s allusive arsenal. Ever since Stephen Hinds opened his foundational Allusion and Intertext with this device, it has been considered the preserve of Hellenistic and Roman scholar-poets. In this chapter, however, I argue that we should back-date the phenomenon all the way to the archaic age. By considering a range of illustrative examples from epic, lyric and tragedy, I demonstrate that the ‘Alexandrian footnote’ has a long history before Alexandria. 

(15) “Epiphany and Salvation in Inscribed Hellenistic Poetry: Bacchic and Odyssean Resonances in the Verse-Inscription of Hyssaldomos of Mylasa”, in M.A. Harder, J.H. Klooster, R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.) Crisis and Resilience in Hellenistic Poetry. Hellenistica Groningana. Leuven (Peeters) [submitted, forthcoming] 

• The recently published verse-inscription by Hyssaldomos of Mylasa commemorates a moment of divine salvation: an unnamed divine anax (‘lord’) and Artemis Kindyas help Pytheas escape from Kindye and settle in Knidos. In this paper, I explore how Hyssaldomos draws on the epic and tragic past to legitimise the power of this anax. I first introduce the poem’s content and context, considering the possible identities of the anax and Pytheas. I then examine Hyssaldomos’ reworkings of both Euripides’ Bacchae and Homer’s Odyssey. The narrative of Pytheas’ imprisonment and escape shares numerous parallels with that of the disguised Dionysus and his bacchant followers in Euripides’ drama. I argue that these parallels go beyond the typological pattern of a ‘liberation-miracle’. In particular, Hyssaldomos signposts the allusive precedent of the Bacchae by positioning Dionysus in the middle of the poem’s central catalogue of gods. The Euripidean allusion aggrandises both the anax and Pytheas, while also potentially reflecting the contemporary political climate of the early second century BCE. I then explore the poem’s Odyssean epilogue: Hyssaldomos marks the safe escape of Pytheas’ family as a kind of nostos, and the anax predicts Pytheas’ future old age just as Teiresias had Odysseus' in the Odyssean Nekyia. After the Bacchic chaos of the central epiphany and escape, the tale concludes with a sense of homecoming and resolution, fostering a close diplomatic connection between Knidos and Mylasa. In addition, Hyssaldomos’ final verses establish the poet as a parallel for Pytheas, marking the anax’s control of not only the military and political spheres but also the poetic. After concluding, I provide a text and translation of the inscription in an appendix. 

(14) "Iphigenia in the Iliad and the Architecture of Homeric Allusion", TAPA 152.1 (2022) 55-101 [​author manuscript at academia.edu; Researchgate; Humanities Commons; please contact me for an offprint]

• In this paper, I argue that the traditional narrative of Iphigenia’s sacrifice lies allusively behind the opening scenes of the Iliad (1.8–487). Scholars have long suspected that this episode is evoked in Agamemnon’s scathing rebuke of Calchas (1.105–8), but I contend that this is only one moment in a far more sustained allusive dialogue: both the debate over Chryseis and her eventual return to her father replay and rework the sacrifice story. The Iliad begins by recalling the start of the whole Trojan war. 

(13) “Beating the Galatians: Ideologies, Analogies and Allegories in Hellenistic Literature and Art”, in A. Coşkun (ed.) (2022) Galatian Victories and Other Studies into the Agency and Identity of the Galatians in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods. Colloquia Antiqua 33. Leuven (Peeters): 97-144 ​[author manuscript at academia.edu; Researchgate; Humanities Commons; please contact me for an offprint]

• Hellenistic literature and art commemorated victories over the Galatians through a variety of analogies and allegories, ranging from the historical Persian Wars to the cosmic Gigantomachy: each individual victory was incorporated into a larger sequence in which order constantly quelled the forces of chaos. This paper explores this analogical phenomenon by setting it within a larger Hellenistic context. The first section analyses the various analogies and allegories employed by the Aetolians, Ptolemies and Attalids, comparing these with their 5th-century Athenian precedent and reassessing the case for a Galatian allegory in the Pergamene Great Altar’s Gigantomachy frieze; the second examines how Callimachus manipulated the common Greek-barbarian antithesis with possible intercultural and metapoetic elements; and the third asks how Seleucid ideology might relate to this larger pattern, focusing on Lucian’s account of Antiochus’ ‘Elephant Victory’ (Zeux. 8–11). Although Lucian’s account probably derives from a prose source and not directly from Simonides of Magnesia’s court epic on the subject, I contend that the Syrian writer is likely indebted to the Seleucids’ own self-presentation in portraying Antiochus as the heir of the Achaemenids through a distinctly orientalising motif: the deployment of an exotic secret weapon. The Greek-barbarian dichotomy so prominent elsewhere thus collapses: the Seleucid king was depicted as the ideal blend of East and West, a worthy successor of Alexander the Great.

(12) “Intertextual Agōnes in Archaic Greek Epic: Penelope vs. the Catalogue of Women”, Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic 5 (2021) 25-57 [Open Access] 

• Archaic Greek epic exhibits a pervasive eristic intertextuality, repeatedly positioning its heroes and itself against pre-existing traditions. Here I focus on a specific case study from the Odyssey: Homer’s agonistic relationship with the Catalogue of Women tradition. Hesiodic-style Catalogue poetry has long been recognized as an important intertext for the Nekyia of Odyssey 11, but here I explore a more sustained dialogue across the whole poem. Through an ongoing agōn that sets Odysseus’ wife against the women of the Catalogue, Homer establishes the pre-eminence of his heroine and—by extension—the supremacy of his own poem.

(11) “Archilochus’ Cologne Epode and Homer’s Quivering Spear (fr. 196a.52 IEG2)”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 219 (2021) 4-7 [published version at academia.edu; Researchgate; Humanities Commons]

• 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 adding a further hint towards how we might read the poem's enigmatic close.

(10) “Repeating the Unrepeated: Allusions to Homeric Hapax Legomena in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry”, in D. Beck (ed.) (2021) Repetition, Communication, and Meaning in the Ancient World (Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World Vol. 13, Mnemosyne Suppl. 442). Leiden (Brill): 119-157 [author manuscript at academia.edu; Researchgate; Humanities Commons; please contact me for an offprint]

• ​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, tragedy and lyric, I explore a range of case studies which demonstrate the extremely sophisticated appropriation of Homeric unica in the pre-Hellenistic world. I argue that this evidence requires us to reconsider the extent of allusion in archaic and classical Greece and to rewrite traditional narratives of literary history. 

(9) “Tragic Noise and Rhetorical Frigidity in Lycophron’s Alexandra”, Classical Quarterly 71.1 (2021) 200-215 (with K. Molesworth) [Open Access]

• 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 polemical departure from the Alexandrian’s poetic programme, pointedly appropriating key Callimachean images while also countering Callimachus’ apparent dismissal of the ‘noisy’ tragic genre. Previous scholarship has noted links between the openings of the Aetia and Alexandra, but this article demonstrates that this relationship is only one part of a larger aesthetic divide between the two poets: by embracing the raucous acoustics of tragedy, Lycophron’s poem offers a self-conscious and agonistic departure from Callimachus’ aesthetic preferences. Second, this article considers another way of conceiving the aesthetics of the poem beyond a Callimachean frame, highlighting how Lycophron pointedly engages with and evokes earlier Aristotelian literary criticism concerning the ‘frigid’ style: the Alexandra constructs its own independent literary history centred around the alleged name of its author, ‘Lycophron’. The article proposes that this traditional attribution is best understood as a pen name that signposts the poem’s stylistic affiliations, aligning it not so much with the Ptolemaic playwright Lycophron of Chalcis, but rather with Lycophron the sophist and a larger rhetorical tradition of stylistic frigidity. Ultimately, through these two approaches, the article highlights further aspects of the Alexandra’s aesthetic diversity. 

(8) “The Coma Stratonices: Royal Hair Encomia and Ptolemaic-Seleucid Rivalry?”, in J.H. Klooster, M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.) (2021) Women and Power in Hellenistic Poetry. Hellenistica Groningana 26. Leuven (Peeters): 299-320 [author manuscript at academia.edu; Researchgate; Humanities Commons; please contact me for an offprint]

• 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 through a long illness, organised a competition in which poets elaborately praised her non-existent locks. I subject this testimonium to a close analysis. First, I consider the details and reliability of Lucian's account, arguing that it reflects key aspects of the queen's character and story as told elsewhere, and is likely drawn from a pre-existing source, perhaps even from the ambit of the Seleucid court itself; then I compare this episode with Alexandrian poets' encomia of Ptolemaic queens, highlighting parallel encomiastic techniques and possible direct connections with the poetry of Callimachus, especially his own poem on queenly hair: the Coma Berenices. Given the nature of the evidence, my arguments must be considered tentative and exploratory, but I suggest that the anecdote offers hints of an inter-dynastic poetic rivalry: royal women and their hair stood at the centre of a literary battleground, in which poets not only celebrated the status of their own queens, but also negotiated the poetry and authority of their rivals.

(7) "Achilles’ Heel: (Im)mortality in the Iliad", Omnibus 82 (2021) 7-9 [author manuscript at academia.edu; Researchgate; Humanities Commons; please contact me for an offprint] 

• 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 immortality within the poem. The only way to achieve immortality in the Iliad is through the fame and glory provided by Homeric song.

(6) “Attalid Aesthetics: The Pergamene ‘Baroque’ Reconsidered”, Journal of Hellenic Studies 140 (2020) 176-198 [Open Access] [abstract]
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(5) "Nicander's Hymn to Attalus: Pergamene Panegyric", Cambridge Classical Journal​ 66 (2020) 182-202 [full text online] [abstract]

(4) “Penelopean Simaetha: A Flawed Paradigm of Femininity in Theocritus’ Second Idyll”, in C. Cusset, P. Belenfant and C.-E. Nardone (eds.) (2020) Féminités hellénistiques: Voix, genre, représentations. Hellenistica Groningana 25. Leuven (Peeters): 387-405 [author manuscript at academia.edu; Researchgate; Humanities Commons; please contact me for an offprint] [abstract]

(3) “Metapoetic Manoeuvres Between Callimachus and Apollonius: A Response to Annette Harder”, Aevum Antiquum 19 (2019) 107-127 [published 2020; author manuscript at academia.edu; Researchgate; Humanities Commons; please contact me for an offprint] [abstract]

(2) “‘Most Musicall, Most Melancholy’: Avian Aesthetics of Lament in Greek and Roman Elegy”, Dictynna 16 (2019) 1-47 [Open Access] [abstract]

(1) “The Shadow of Aristophanes: Hellenistic Poetry’s Reception of Comic Poetics”, in M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.) (2018) Drama and Performance in Hellenistic Poetry. Hellenistica Groningana 23. Leuven (Peeters): 225-271 [author manuscript at Humanities Commons; academia.edu; Researchgate; please contact me for an offprint] [abstract]

Dictionary/Encyclopedia Entries 

(5) “Clôture, fermeture” in C. Urlacher & D. Meyer (eds.) Dictionnaire analytique de l’épigramme antique. Turnhout (Brepols) [submitted, forthcoming; English original at Humanities Commons; academia.edu; Researchgate]

• Closure is a topic of enduring critical attention for literary scholars, who ask both how, and to what extent, the structure and content of a work prepare a reader for its end, and how ‘satisfying’ that ending is when it comes. It is a particularly important topic for readers of epigram, a genre especially associated with concision, finality and permanence because of its inscriptional background. I explore how Greek and Latin epigrammatists exploited structure as a particularly powerful tool for conveying closure, while also thematising closure more allusively through motifs evoking a sense of finality and termination. Epigrammatists also self-consciously marked their ends by alluding to the coronis and to the endings of other works. Yet they also exploited closural techniques at other points: not only at the midpoint of a collection, but also to challenge and surprise readers with the prospect of 'false closure'.

(4) “Érudition” in C. Urlacher & D. Meyer (eds.) Dictionnaire analytique de l’épigramme antique. Turnhout (Brepols) [submitted, forthcoming; English original at Humanities Commons; academia.edu; Researchgate]

• Learning and erudition is one of the defining features of Hellenistic and later Greek poetry, and epigram is no exception. I explore Greek epigrams' intense interest in literary history, formalistic play and visual literary games. I also consider Greek epigrammatists' learned interest in philology and language, including foreign words, technical vocabulary and obscure poetic glossai. Yet epigrammatists also exhibited a broad range of knowledge and learning in other fields, including aetiology, astronomy, botany, ethnography, geography and topography, local antiquarianism, mathematics, medicine, mythology, paradoxography, philosophy, and zoology. I end by arguing that such erudition is not a sign that literary epigram was solely designed for or read by a highly esoteric and cloistered elite; much of the learning on display in epigram would be, at least to some degree, familiar and accessible to a relatively broad audience.

(3) “Équitation, Char/Horsemanship, Chariot-Riding” in J.-P. Guez et al. (eds.) Dictionnaire des images métapoétiques anciennes. Paris (Classiques Garnier) [submitted, forthcoming; author manuscript at academia.edu]

• ​This chapter explores the metapoetic potential of horse- and chariot-riding in Latin literature. I first highlight the malleability of the 'chariot of song' metaphor and its particular Roman inflections (especially the image of the 'triumph' and equestrian contests). I then consider the metaphor's application to a wide range of genres and styles through differing descriptions of the nature and terrain of the journey and the trappings and steed of the chariot (focusing on epic, elegy, lyric, didactic poetry and epistolary prose). Finally, I explore how the metaphor was employed to represent the gradual progress of a poet or reader through a book, poem or collection, marking the start, middle and end of a poet's course.​

(2) “Pas, traces de pas/Steps, Footsteps” in J.-P. Guez et al. (eds.) Dictionnaire des images métapoétiques anciennes. Paris (Classiques Garnier) [submitted, forthcoming; author manuscript at academia.edu]

• “Following in the footsteps” of a predecessor was a common metaphor of imitation and succession in ancient Greece and Rome. In this chapter, I explore how Greek and Latin authors are often described, or describe themselves, as following their predecessors' tracks. But many poets also feel the need to break free from the literary past and to strive for originality by pursuing 'untrodden' paths, a paradoxically 'unoriginal' motif – most poetic composition involves an ambiguous mix of both tradition and innovation. I end by exploring how Greek and Latin poets used ἴχνια and vestigia as implicit markers of intertextual connections, a means to signpost both allusive debts and innovative departures.

(1) “Vol, larcin/Stealing, Theft” in J.-P. Guez et al. (eds.) Dictionnaire des images métapoétiques anciennes. Paris (Classiques Garnier) [submitted, forthcoming; author manuscript at academia.edu]

• Theft was a common metaphor in antiquity to describe a poet’s appropriation and reuse of his models. Although the image could convey skill and subtlety, it was tarred with primarily negative connotations, akin to the modern conception of plagiarism. In this chapter, I explore how poets were accused of theft by critics and rivals, despite the ambiguity of the term: the distinction between literary larceny and imitation was extremely hazy, and largely seems to have been a matter of context and perspective. Yet beyond the immediate sphere of literary polemic, the metaphor of theft was also frequently reclaimed by poets as a more positive trope for their own allusive activity. I explore instances from Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Longus, Callimachus, Aristophanes, Sophocles, and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.​

Reviews

(9) Homer's Thebes: Review of Barker, E.T.E and Christensen, J.P. (2020) Homer's Thebes: Epic Rivalries and the Appropriation of Mythical Pasts (Cambridge MA). Classical Journal 117.2 (2021–2022) 232-234 [Classical Journal Online pre-print]

(8) Seleucid Literature: Review of Visscher, M.S. (2020) Beyond Alexandria: Literature and Empire in the Seleucid World (Oxford). Classical Review 71.2 (2021) 336-338

(7) The Odyssey and the Cycle: Review of Burgess, J., Ready, J., Tsagalis, C. (eds.) (2019) Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic 3 (Leiden and Boston). Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2020.03.32

(6) Simonides the Poet: Review of Rawles, R. (2018) Simonides the Poet: Intertextuality and Reception (Cambridge and New York). Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2019.02.46

(5) Hesiodic Fragments: Review of Tsagalis, C. (ed.) (2017) Poetry in Fragments: Studies on the Hesiodic Corpus and its Afterlife (Berlin and Boston). Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2018.07.33 [Author Manuscript at Humanities Commons]
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(4) A New Hellenistic Poetry Anthology: Notice of Sider (D.) (ed.) (2017) Hellenistic Poetry. A Selection (Ann Arbor). Classical Review 68.1 (2018) 287 [Author Manuscript at Humanities Commons]

(3) Poetry and Art from Alexander to Augustus: Review of Linant de Bellefonds, P., Prioux, É., Rouveret, A. (eds.) (2015) D’Alexandre à Auguste. Dynamiques de la création dans les arts visuels et la poésie (Rennes). Classical Review 67.1 (2017) 246-268 [Author Manuscript at Humanities Commons; Zenodo]
 
(2) Callimachus’ Hymns: Review of Stephens, S.A. (2015) ‘Callimachus: the Hymns’ (Oxford and New York). Mnemosyne 69.6 (2016) 1070-1073 [Author Manuscript at Humanities Commons; Zenodo]
 
(1) Seleucid Space and Ideology: Review of Kosmin, P. J. (2014) ‘The Land of the Elephant Kings. Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire’ (Cambridge MA and London). Classical Review 66.1 (2016) 180-182  [Author Manuscript at Humanities Commons; Zenodo]