Assistant Professor, General Faculty. His research mainly focuses on Latin literature of the early Empire, with especial interest in the correlation between philosophical frameworks and narrative structures in Latin epic, and the intersection of gender and genre in Latin poetry. His first monograph, titled ‘Amor belli’: Love and Strife in Lucan’s ‘Bellum civile’, was published with The University of Michigan Press in 2022. He has contributed articles on a variety of authors, such as Catullus, Vergil, Livy, Ovid, Seneca, Lucan, Persius, Satatius, Juvenal, and Tacitus. He co-directs the interdisciplinary initiative "The Siren Project: Women's Voice in Literature and the Visual Arts," which was awarded the 2023 SCS Outreach Prize. 

Research Interests

My primary research interests focus on Latin Literature, that of the Imperial Age in particular. My first monograph examines the literary adaptation of the cosmological dialectic of Love and Strife in Lucan’s Bellum civile. According to a reading that has found favor over the last three decades, the poem is an unconventional epic that does not conform to Aristotelian norms: in order to portray his vision of cosmic dissolution, Lucan composes a poem characterized by fragmentation and disorder, lacking a conventional teleology, and whose narrative flow is constantly delayed. My study challenges this interpretation by illustrating that although Lucan invokes imagery of cosmic dissolution, he does so without altogether obliterating epic norms; rather, the Bellum civile transforms them from within in order to accomplish its purpose: namely, condemnation of the establishment of the Principate and the Julio-Claudian dynasty. In this book I also focus on other significant issues, such as Lucan’s contentious relationship with his models, especially Vergil and Latin elegy, and his influence on later authors, particularly the Flavian epicists Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus. These same concerns are reflected in my published work and presentations. Although Latin literature is my area of specialization, I maintain a strong interest in Greek poetry as well.

Selected Publications

Book

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

Edited Volume

Classical World 117.1: Women’s Voice in the Early Roman Empire (2023).

Articles and Chapters

“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).

“The Fluidity of Gender Roles in Catullus: A New Interpretation of Poem 11.” CJ 119 (2024): 286-319.: https://doi.org/10.1353/tcj.2024.a919680

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

“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).

“Rewriting the Thebaid: Pietas and the Furies in Silvae 3.3 (and 5.2).” CQ 73 (2023) 304-10.: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838823000186.

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

“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).

“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).

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

“Agathon’s Iliupersis in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae.” SO 97 (2022): 65-74: https://doi.org/10.1080/00397679.2022.2125222.

“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 (2023) 177-89.

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

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

“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).

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

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

“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).

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

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

“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 (forthcoming).

“Servius’ Use of Persius in His Commentary on Vergil’s Aeneid: Uncovering A Rich Intertextual Dialogue.” AJP (forthcoming).

“Persius’s Didactic Satire: Allusions to Vergil’s Georgics in Satires 1, 3, and 5.” HSCP (forthcoming).

“Bad and Good Teachers in Persius’ Satires: A Divided Allusion to Vergil Georgics 1.” Phoenix (forthcoming).

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.