My scholarship ranges across Greek and Roman literature, Renaissance humanism, humor, free speech, psychology, and the reception of the classical world. The publications below offer a representative selection. A complete academic bibliography is also available.
Free Speech, Censorship, and Public Life
Before Pussy Riot: Free Speech and Censorship in the Age of Plautus
An examination of political satire, obscenity, and censorship in Roman comedy, arguing that Plautus’s engagement with the imprisoned Greek poet Sotades complicates the conventional history of Roman free expression.
In Plautus’ Erudite Comedy, 2020.
The Real Source Behind “Sic Semper Tyrannis”
The familiar phrase did not originate where people generally suppose. Its deeper history leads through Homer’s Odyssey, ancient Rome, and the American Founders.
In Medias Res, 2021.
The Art of Slander
A study of Lucian’s ancient warning about slander and a remarkable Renaissance response to it, illustrated through Botticelli, Dürer, and other artists.
Classical Wisdom Litterae, 2020.
Roman Comedy and Human Behavior
The Stanford Prison Experiment of 200 BCE: The Lucifer Effect in Plautus’ Prisoners
Plautus’s Captivi anticipates modern arguments about dehumanization, situational evil, and the transformation of prisoners and guards by the institutions surrounding them.
In Plautus Revisited: Problemstellungen und Perspektiven der Plautusforschung, 2023.
Ut Pictura Po(e)sis? Wine, Women, and Song in Plautus’ Gorgylio (Curculio)
A scene in Plautus’s Curculio may parody a famous lost painting by Apelles once displayed at Epidaurus, revealing a surprising interaction between Roman comedy and Greek visual culture.
In Plautus Revisited: Problemstellungen und Perspektiven der Plautusforschung, 2023.
Freudian Bullseyes in Classical Perspective: The Psycholinguistics of Guilt in Virgil’s Aeneid
Roman poets understood that concealed preoccupations could determine the words people uttered in moments of extreme emotion. This essay proposes a psycholinguistic explanation for significant puns in Virgil, Lucretius, and Catullus.
In Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry, 2016.
Reconsidering Some Plautine Elements in Plautus
Two famous examples of supposedly characteristically “Plautine” language instead reveal Plautus’s extraordinary ingenuity as a translator and adapter of Greek comedy.
The Classical Journal 111, 2016.
Ovid, Cicero, and the Classical Tradition
The Myth of Ovid’s Exile
A reassessment of the evidence behind one of classical literature’s most enduring biographical narratives: the traditional account of Ovid’s banishment from Rome.
Electryone 6, 2019.
Jurassic Marc: Adventures in Decoding Cicero’s Consolation
The strange modern afterlife of Cicero’s lost Consolation—and the challenges involved in determining whether fragments attributed to it are authentic.
Antigone, 2022.
Joachim Camerarius on Witches, Witchcraft, and Criminal Responsibility
A study of the Renaissance humanist Joachim Camerarius’s treatment of witchcraft and the difficult problem of assigning moral and criminal responsibility.
In Camerarius Polyhistor, 2017.
Is the Story of Susanna and the Elders Based on a Greek New Comedy?
Evidence from Plautus’s Casina and Burmeister’s Susanna suggests that the biblical story may share important structural features with Greek New Comedy.
In Roman Drama and Its Contexts, 2016.
Classical Antiquity and the Modern World
Aeneas in Palestine
What Virgil’s story of migration, dispossession, and competing claims to a homeland can contribute to modern reflection on Palestine.
Originally published in Eidolon, 2015; revised edition.
Did Psychosurgery Start Out as a Joke?
A curious episode in ancient comedy raises the possibility that the idea of curing mental illness through surgery began as satire.
Psychology Today, 2020.
For the complete publication record, see my academic bibliography and Cornell profile.