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.

In Princeton, I am spending Spring Semester of 2025 as Class of 1932 Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Department of Classics. 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. I am a professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, where I have been teaching since 2000.