Personal Info

E-mail: matthew.leigh(at)st-annes.ox.ac.uk
Tel: 01865 274845
Special responsibilities: Dean of Degrees

Academic Background:
I studied at Balliol College, Oxford (1986-91), at St Hugh’s College, Oxford (1991-93), and as a visiting student at the University of Pisa in 1992. I taught Classics and Ancient History at Exeter University (1993-97) and have been at St Anne’s since then.

Teaching Interests:
Undergraduate: Homer; Vergil, Texts and Contexts; Latin and Greek Language; Greek Literature of the 5th Century B.C.; Latin Literature of the 1st Century B.C.; Ancient Comedy; Ovid; Neronian Literature; Epic, Tragedy and Comedy for Classics and English.

Graduate - Current and Previous Doctoral Students: Lucan; Mourning in Greek and Latin Epic; Dionysus in Republican Latin Literature; Statius and Silius. I have also supervised a large number of MPhil and MSt students and taught a variety of papers for these courses.

Research Interests:
I have broad interests in Roman culture and tend to work on the borders of Latin literature and Roman history. I have recently published a study on the relationship between the emergence of Roman epic poetry and emergence of the Roman navy. I am also involved in a longer-term project on ancient ideas of curiosity.

Selected Publications:

Books:

• Matthew Leigh, From Polypragmon to Curiosus: Ancient Concepts of Curious and Meddlesome Behaviour, 2013
• Matthew Leigh, Comedy and the Rise of Rome, 2004
• Matthew Leigh, Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement, 1997

Articles:

• Matthew Leigh, ‘Wounding and Popular Rhetoric at Rome’, BICS 40 (1995) 195-212
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Varius Rufus, Thyestes and the Appetites of Antony’, PCPhS 42 (1996) 171-97
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Sophocles at Patavium (fr. 137 Radt)’, JHS 118 (1998) 82-100
• Matthew Leigh, ‘The Pro Caelio and Comedy’, CPh 99 (2004), 300-35
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Quintilian on the Emotions’ (Instituto Oratoria 6 Preface and 1-2), JRS 94 (2004), 12-40
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Statius and the Sublimity of Capaneus’, Epic Interactions (2006), 217-42
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Petrarch’s Lucan and the Africa’, Classical Constructions. Papers in Memory of Don Fowler (2007), 242-57
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Epic and Historiography at Rome’, in J. Marincola (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (2007), ii. 483–92
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Commedia Togata: the Terenzio of Goldoni and the Contest for Literary Authority’, IJCT 15 (2008), 53–73
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Neronian Literature: Seneca and Lucan’, in M.T. Griffin (ed.), A Companion to Julius Caesar (2009), 239–52
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Boxing and Sacrifice. Apollonius, Vergil, and Valerius’, HSCP 105 (2009), 117–55
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Lucan’s Caesar and the Sacred Grove. Deforestation and Enlightenment in Antiquity’, in C. Tesoriero (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies. Lucan (2010), 201–38
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Forms of Exile in the Rudens of Plautus’, CQ 60 (2010), 1101–17
• Matthew Leigh, ‘The Garland of Maecenas (Horace, Odes 1. 1. 35)’, CQ 60 (2010), 268–71
• Matthew Leigh, ‘Early Roman Epic and the Maritime Moment’, Classical Philology 105 (2010), 265-80
• Matthew Leigh, ‘“César coup de foudre”. La signification d’un symbole chez Lucain’, in O. Devillers and S. Franchet d’Espèrey (eds), ‘Lucain en débat. Rhétorique, poétique et histoire’ (Bordeaux, 2010), 159–65