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Overview

Professor Peter Heslin

Professor

Affiliations
AffiliationTelephone
Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History+44 (0) 191 33 41682
Co-Director (Digital Humanities) in the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Biography

My research focuses on classical Latin poetry and its reception, Roman material culture, and the digital humanities.

My current interests in digital humanities include the application of machine learning and Bayesian statistical methods to literary history, the training of large language models for ancient languages, and making Latin and ancient Greek more accessible to everyone by means of open-source software that helps readers of all levels engage with texts in the original language. I am the developer of Diogenes, a widely used application for working with databases of Greek and Latin texts, which can be downloaded from its home page. There is also a browser-based version for handheld devices, called DiogenesWeb.

My first book, The Transvestite Achilles: Gender and Genre in the Achilleid of Statius (Cambridge University Press, 2005), was the first full-length study of an unfinished Latin epic poem narrating the early biography of Achilles, including a striking episode in which the hero was dressed as a girl by his mother to hide him away from the Trojan War.

In my second book, The Museum of Augustus: The Temple of Apollo in Pompeii, the Portico of Philippus and Roman Poetry (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2015), I explore the interconnections between the mythological content of Roman wall painting and of Augustan poetry. That book introduces new techniques for reconstructing the appearance of lost and damaged Pompeiian paintings and for explaining their content. I conclude by exploring how a series of famous ecphrases in Augustan poetry, especially Virgil’s account of the temple of Juno in Cathage, may have been responses to a specific Roman monument and its decorative programme.

In my third book, Propertius, Greek Myth, and Virgil: Rivalry, Allegory and Polemic (Oxford University Press, 2018), I give a new account of Propertius’ use of examples from Greek myth, which on the surface often seem inept or pointless. Myth emerges as a language in which Propertius engages in a dialogue with the Greek literary tradition and in polemics with his rivals, especially Virgil.

I have published articles on Statius’ Thebaid and its reception; on chronology and relationships among the the Augustan poets; on the Roman calendar and the solar meridian of Augustus; on Ovid’s Metamorphoses; on Virgil’s Georgics; on the Roman emperors as readers of Homer; and on digital Classics.

I am currently Class of 1932 Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Department of Classics at Princeton University. Previously, in 2012 I was Joan Palevsky Visiting Professor of Classics at the University of California at Los Angeles and in 2010 I was a Getty Scholar at the J. Paul Getty Villa and the Getty Research Institute. 

PhD Supervision

I would be happy to speak to anyone consuidering a PhD in digital humanities, especially the application of statistical models to premodern literary history.  I am also available to supervise projects on Latin poetry from the Augustan to Flavian period.

School Talks

I am happy to give school talks on Roman mythological painting from Pompeii or on Greek myth in Latin poetry. 

Research interests

  • Latin poetry
  • Roman painting
  • Humanities computing
  • Reception of Latin poetry

Publications

Authored book

Chapter in book

  • Fortunatus et ille: Vergil’s Ironic Epicureanism
    Heslin, P. (2023). Fortunatus et ille: Vergil’s Ironic Epicureanism. In T. H. M. Gellar-Goad & C. B. Polt (Eds.), Didactic Literature in the Roman World (pp. 47-67). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003378051-5
  • Secrets and Lies: The Power of Thetis in Roman Culture
    Heslin, P. (2023). Secrets and Lies: The Power of Thetis in Roman Culture. In M. Paprocki, G. P. Vos, & D. J. Wright (Eds.), The Staying Power of Thetis: Allusion, Interaction, and Reception from Homer to the 21st Century (pp. 147-179). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110678437-007
  • Lemmatizing Latin and Quantifying the Achilleid
    Heslin, P. (2020). Lemmatizing Latin and Quantifying the Achilleid. In N. Coffee, C. Forstall, L. Galli Milic, & D. Nelis (Eds.), Intertextuality in Flavian Epic Poetry: Contemporary Approaches (pp. 389-407). de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110602203-018
  • The Julian Calendar and the Solar Meridian of Augustus
    Heslin, P. (2019). The Julian Calendar and the Solar Meridian of Augustus. In M. Loar & S. Rebeggiani (Eds.), The Cultural History of Augustan Rome (pp. 45-79). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108635806.004
  • Introduction
    Heslin, P. (2018). Introduction. In P. Worsnip (Ed.), Poems of Sextus Propertius, translated by Patrick Worsnip (pp. 7-17). Carcanet.
  • A Perfect Murder: The Hypsipyle Epyllion
    Heslin, P. (2016). A Perfect Murder: The Hypsipyle Epyllion. In N. Manioti (Ed.), Family in Flavian epic. (pp. 89-121). Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004324664_006
  • Ovid’s Cycnus and Homer’s Achilles’ Heel
    Heslin, P. (2016). Ovid’s Cycnus and Homer’s Achilles’ Heel. In L. Fulkerson & T. Stover (Eds.), Repeat Performances: Ovidian Repetition and the Metamorphoses. University of Wisconsin Press.
  • The Dream of a Universal Variorum: Digitizing the Commentary Tradition
    Heslin, P. (2016). The Dream of a Universal Variorum: Digitizing the Commentary Tradition. In C. S. Kraus & C. Stray (Eds.), Classical commentaries : explorations in a scholarly genre. (pp. 494-511). Oxford University Press.
  • Introduction
    Heslin, P. (2015). Introduction. In Statius, Achilleid, translated by Stanley Lombardo (p. vii-xxxii). Hackett.
  • Statius in Dante's Commedia
    Heslin, P. (2015). Statius in Dante’s Commedia. In W. J. Dominik, C. E. Newlands, & K. Gervais (Eds.), Brill’s Companion to Statius. Brill.
  • Statius and the Greek Tragedians on Athens, Thebes and Rome
    Heslin, P. (2008). Statius and the Greek Tragedians on Athens, Thebes and Rome. In J. Smolenaars, H. -J. Van Dam, & R. Nauta (Eds.), The Poetry of Statius (pp. 111-128). Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004171343.i-276.24

Journal Article

Supervision students

Judy Quinn