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Biography
I was born in Birmingham in 1947, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School (Northwood) and King's College, Cambridge, where I took a first in Classics. Intending to move into the field of Linguistics, I studied for a semester at Indiana University before returning to King's, where I was elected a Research Fellow in 1970 and completed my PhD thesis (part of which was afterwards published as The Sound Pattern of Ancient Greek) in 1971. The decisive event in my career was my purchase in October 1969, for five shillings (25p), of David Barrett's Penguin translation of three plays of Aristophanes. This inspired me to attempt myself a translation of three of his other plays and offer it to Penguin (who published it as Lysistrata and Other Plays in 1973, with a second edition in 2002); that led to a commission to edit and (in partnership with Barrett) translate all eleven of Aristophanes' plays for the Loeb Classical Library; that project was eventually axed, but from its ashes arose another edition (by myself alone) published by Aris & Phillips between 1980 and 2003, and meanwhile, after several failed applications for teaching posts in Linguistics, it had secured for me (on the day after the birth of my first child, Louise) a job as Lecturer in Classics at Nottingham.
I was on the Classics staff at Nottingham from 1974 until my retirement in January 2014, becoming a Reader in 1983 and Professor of Greek in 1988. I was Head of Department from 1992-97 and again, after the death of Thomas Wiedemann, from 2001-02. I have also been, among other things, editor of the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1989-95) and Gaisford Lecturer in the University of Oxford (2007).
I am married with three children and four grandchildren.
Expertise Summary
My main speciality is ancient Greek drama, both tragedy and comedy; I have worked on all the major dramatists and many minor ones, and produced (alone or in collaboration) complete editions of 19 fully (or almost fully) preserved and 13 fragmentary plays. I have also led a major research project on the oath in archaic and classical Greece, which produced a database of all references to oaths in Greek literary and inscriptional texts down to 322 BC, and am now, with five collaborators, completing a two-volume study of the subject.
Teaching Summary
Before my retirement I taught a range of modules on ancient Greek literature and society, including Advanced Greek/Greek Texts (studying various branches of Greek literature, mostly poetry, through… read more
Research Summary
I am completing, with five collaborators, Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece, the second volume of the comprehensive study of this subject arising out of the research project, funded by the… read more
Before my retirement I taught a range of modules on ancient Greek literature and society, including Advanced Greek/Greek Texts (studying various branches of Greek literature, mostly poetry, through texts read in the original), Greek Comedy (in the very different varieties represented by its two major authors, Aristophanes and Menander), Women in the Greek World (both in life and in literature), Sex, Lies and Violence (studying cases from the Athenian law courts - the methods speakers used to persuade juries, and how one can get behind their spin and their selectivity with the truth), Tragedy and Citizenship (social, political and religious aspects of Greek tragedy), and postgraduate modules on Greek drama and sometimes on ancient literature more generally. All of these were to a greater or lesser extent directly informed by my research, and have in turn contributed to it; my books contain a fair number of acknowledgements of insights which I owe to individual undergraduates.
Current Research
I am completing, with five collaborators, Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece, the second volume of the comprehensive study of this subject arising out of the research project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, which I began in 2004.
I am editing for Wiley-Blackwell an Encyclopedia of Greek Comedy which will comprise over 1300 articles, by 187 contributors from more than twenty countries and from every continent, on all aspects of ancient Greek comedy and its reception.
As soon as Oaths and Swearing is completed, I will begin work on an edition of Aeschylus' tragedy The Suppliant Maidens -- which has in the past been something of a Cinderella among his works -- for Cambridge University Press.
I am committed to writing during 2014 at least three articles on various aspects of Greek tragedy and comedy.
Past Research
See catalogue of publications.
Future Research
I am committed to completing by 2016 a student-oriented book on Aristophanes and Athenian Old Comedy.
In the medium term, I intend to revise completely my 11-volume edition of the comedies of Aristophanes (the earlier volumes of which are now over 30 years old) to take account of scholarship since it first appeared.