Dr Thomas R P Coward

My research expertise is in Greek literature with specialisms on Greek poetry (epic, lyric, drama, Hellenistic), Graeco-Roman literary and intellectual culture, and the editing of fragmentary literary texts including the Herculaneum papyri. I have published a number of articles on these topics, as well as two edited volumes, Paths of Song: The Lyric Dimension of Greek Tragedy (2018), and Didymus and Graeco-Roman Learning (2020). I am particularly interested in the reconstruction of fragmentary literary works, the intellectual history of ancient Rhodes, and in making difficult or lesser-known authors or works more accessible.

I am currently a Marie-Curie Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. I previously held another Marie-Curie fellowship at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice (2018-21), and a research fellowship at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale in Naples (2022-25). I also have had teaching posts at King’s College London, George Mason University (USA), and Durham University.

At Bristol, I am preparing the first commentary in English and a revised critical edition and translation of the Hesiodic Catalogue(s) of Women. The archaic Greek epic poems ascribed to Hesiod were one of the most influential sources of heroic tales and genealogies in the ancient world. The poems describe the liaisons between gods and mortal women, their offspring and their marriages and descendants, who became founders or eponyms for settlements, tribes, and regions in Greece and beyond. By bringing cult, gender, geography, and mythology together, the Catalogue(s) offer explanations of societal aspects of archaic Greece (e.g. the status of men and women, marriage practices, religious rites) by appealing to past precedents as a source of authority (e.g. moral, identity, prestige). The Catalogue(s) were widely read; however, they now survive only in fragments, both as quotations in other authors and on papyri recovered from the mid-eighteenth century onwards.

My doctorate, awarded in 2016, explored the lyric poet Pindar’s dependence upon traditions of (now fragmentary) lyric poetry and music, and the distinctive shaping of his poetic strategy. I adapted established notions of intertext and allusion for a song-performance culture by applying methods used in Historical Musicology to demonstrate metrical, lexical, and thematic interactions. My first key research excellence achievement after my doctoral thesis was a co-edited volume Paths of Song (2018) on the interactions between Greek (choral) lyric and tragedy, stemming from an international conference I co-convened. My chapter featured the poet-scholar Timachidas of Rhodes (fl. 99 BC), which led to a growing interest in the cultural history of the island of Rhodes.

At Ca’ Foscari I made considerable progress on one research project and finished another. The first project is the first intellectual history of Rhodes (168 BC-AD 44), which was awarded a Marie-Curie fellowship (2018-21). The project demonstrates Rhodes’ pivotal and under-appreciated role in the development of ancient education and scientific study (poetry, literary scholarship, philosophy, oratory, the sciences and medicine, and encyclopaedism), as well as artistic production and naval expertise, and assesses the impact on Hellenistic and Roman Republican and early Empire culture. From 168BC, as its military power lessened, the island became a centre of study for visiting Greek and Roman elites (e.g. Caesar, Pompey, Brutus, Cassius, Cicero) who learned philosophy and rhetoric there from international teachers, while others migrated (e.g. from Syria and Egypt) to hone artisan skills and set up sculpture workshops. The project shows the island’s transformation from a predominately economic and political power to a more cultural-economic one. With its impressive libraries and schools and its reputation for sculpture Rhodes made a major contribution to knowledge and to the shaping of Graeco-Roman culture. For an overview, see here.

The second project, on Didymus (fl. c. 44BC-AD14), a very important scholar of Greek literature, continued my work on ancient scholarship and led to the publication of a BICS volume in 2021. The volume is an assessment of Didymus’ works and methodologies and includes a checklist of his fragments organised systematically for the first time. The checklist is now the standard reference work for citing Didymus. 

At the Scuola Superiore Meridionale (2022-25) I continued my work on Rhodes. I also laid the foundations for my current project at Bristol on the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women by editing the Hesiodic fragments preserved in Philodemus’ On Piety (one of the works preserved in the Herculaneum papyri). In the future, I hope to return to this treatise using practical and digital tools to produce the first complete edition, translation, and commentary of Philodemus’ On Piety, a lengthy treatise written in response to a Stoic critique of Epicurean theology and a major source for Greek myth and philosophy.