Giulio Celotto

Associate Professor, General Faculty. His major scholarly interests focus on intergeneric dialogue and the intersection of political life, art, and philosophy in the Latin Literature of the Early Roman Empire.

Research Interests

My primary research line explores the correlation between philosophical frameworks and narrative structures in Latin epic. My first monograph, titled ‘Amor belli’: Love and Strife in Lucan’s ‘Bellum civile’ (University of Michigan Press, 2022), provides an overall interpretation of the Bellum civile based on the systematic analysis of Lucan’s literary adaptation of the cosmological dialectic of Love and Strife. There I illustrate that although Lucan invokes imagery of cosmic dissolution, he does so without obliterating epic norms; rather, he transforms them from within to accomplish his purpose: condemnation of the Principate and the Julio-Claudian dynasty. My second book project seeks to investigate the reception of Empedoclean philosophy in Flavian epic. Another significant strand of my research concerns the generic interplay that characterizes Roman satire, particularly the works of Persius and Juvenal. I also maintain a keen interest in the study of the influence of epic poetry on imperial historiography, with especial focus on Tacitus. Finally, I am the co-director of the interdisciplinary initiative “The Siren Project: Women’s Voice in Literature and the Visual Arts” (https://uva.theopenscholar.com/the-siren-project), which was awarded the 2023 SCS Outreach Prize. As part of this project, I co-edited the volume Sulpicia: A Woman’s Voice from Ancient Rome (Oxford University Press, 2026)..

Selected Publications

Book

Amor belli: Love and Strife in Lucan’s Bellum civile. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (2022).

Edited Volumes

Sulpicia: A Woman’s Voice from Ancient Rome. Edited with L. Fulkerson. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2026).

Breaking the Silence: Io and Philomela in Ovid's Metamorphoses.  Classical World 117.1: Women’s Voice in the Early Roman Empire (2023).

Articles

“The Contribution of Board Games to Vocabulary Acquisition in the College Latin Classroom.” Journal of Classics Teaching 27 (2026): 42-45.

“Introducing Female Voices in the College Latin Classroom: A New Course on Roman Women Writers.” Teaching Classical Languages 14: 112-27 (2025).

“Persius’s Didactic Satire: Allusions to Vergil’s Georgics in Satires 1, 3, and 5.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 114: 167-89 (2025).

“Bad and Good Teachers in Persius’ Satires: A Divided Allusion to Vergil Georgics 1.” Phoenix 78:215-24 (2024).

“Servius’ Use of Persius in His Commentary on Vergil’s Aeneid: Uncovering A Rich Intertextual Dialogue.” American Journal of Philology 145:593-629 (2024).

"The Dismembering Force of Civil War: A Livian Echo in Tacitus Historiae 2.70.” Vichiana 61:53-61 (2024).

“The Fluidity of Gender Roles in Catullus: A New Interpretation of Poem 11.” Classical Journal 119:286-319 (2024). 

“A Case Study in the Reception of Cornutus’ Exegetic Work on Vergil: Persius 3.88-102 as a Rewriting of Georgics 3.425-439.” MD 91:177-89 (2023).

“Agathon’s Iliupersis in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae.” Symbolae Osloenses 97:65-74 (2022)

“Breaking the Silence: Io and Philomela in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.” Classical World 117:1-15 (2023).

“Not Only Ariadne: The Influence of Catullus 11 on Aeneid 4.” Vergilius 69:59-77 (2023).

“Rewriting the Thebaid: Pietas and the Furies in Silvae 3.3 (and 5.2).” Classical Quarterly 73:304-10 (2023).

“Satire as a Complement to Epic and Tragedy: The Influence of Juvenal Satire 15 on Dante Inferno 32-33.” Paideia 77:95-111 (2022).

“The Escalating Repetitiveness of Civil War: Lucanian Allusions in Tacitus’ Account of the Conflict between Otho and Vitellius in Historiae 1-2.” Classical World 114:171-99 (2021).

“Rewriting Vergil: The Influence of Lucan Bellum Civile 6 on the Parades of Heroes of Juvenal Satire 2 and Dante Paradiso 6.” Illinois Classical Studies 44:25-41 (2019).

“The Metapoetic Function of Magic: Ovid’s Orpheus and Lucan’s Erictho.” Latomus 77:628-45 (2018).

“Ἐνιαυτός in Hesiod Theogony 58: One-Year Pregnancy in Archaic Greek Poetry.” Hermes 145:224-34 (2017).

“Leonidas AP 6.188 (=4 HE).” Mnemosyne 68:479-87 (2015).

Forthcoming. “A Horatian Echo in Tacitus Agricola 3.1: Principate and Freedom, res olim dissociabilis.” Classical Quarterly.

Forthcoming. “Proba’s Eve as Pandora: Hesiodic Echoes in the Cento.” Philologus.

Chapters

“Reclaiming Sulpicia’s Poetic Voice.” In Sulpicia: A Woman’s Voice from Ancient Rome, edited by G. Celotto and L. Fulkerson, 1-14. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2026).

“Lucan’s Erictho and Tacitus’ Locusta: From History to Epic, from Epic to Historiography.” In Papers of the Langford Latin Seminar 19: Roman History in Roman Poetry, edited by F. Cairns and T. Luke, 303-16. Prenton: Francis Cairns (2024).

“The Fortune of Antiochus of Syracuse in the Augustan Age: Italus as the Eponymous Hero of Italy.” In Fervet opus: Per i primi 60 anni di Vichiana, edited by C. Formicola. Pisa and Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore (2024).

“The Prophecy of Nigidius Figulus in Lucan Bellum civile 1: Literary and Philosophical Perspectives.” In Nigidius Figulus: Roman Polymath, edited by K. Volk, 136-50. Leiden: Brill (2024).

“From militia amoris to amor militiae: Language of Rape in Lucan’s Account of the Deforestation of the Sacred Grove of Massilia.” In Vergil and Elegy, edited by A. Keith and M. Y. Myers, 251-64. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (2023).

“Lucan’s Erictho: The plus quam Witch.” In Studi sull’epica latina in onore di Paolo Esposito, edited by E. M. Ariemma, V. D’Urso, and N. Lanzarone, 297-310. Pisa: ETS (2023).

“Repetitions and Variations in the Metamorphoses: Ovid’s Reappropriation of Vergil and Propertius in the Narratives of Medea and Scylla, and Byblis and Myrrha.” In Papers of the Langford Latin Seminar 18: Latin Poetry, Republican and Imperial, edited by F. Cairns, 151-78. Prenton: Francis Cairns (2021).

“Cato’s Teachings of Virtus: Gruesome Deaths in Lucan Bellum Civile 9 and in the Hercules Oetaeus.” In Seminari Lucanei I. In memoria di Emanuele Narducci, edited by P. Esposito, 149-65. Pisa: ETS (2020).

“Alexander the Great in Seneca’s Works and in Lucan’s Bellum Civile.” In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great, edited by K. Moore, 325-54. Leiden: Brill (2018).

Personal

I completed my B.A. (2007) and M.A. (2009) at the University of Naples Federico II, and received my Ph.D. in Classics (2017) from Florida State University. After spending a research period at the University of California, Irvine, I served as Visiting Assistant Professor in Classical Studies at Concordia College, Moorhead. I joined the Classics Department at the University of Virginia in 2018.