Latin Poetry and Philosophy
Gareth Williams, Violin Family Professor of Classics, has taught at Columbia since 1992 after completing doctoral work at Cambridge (1990). His main publications have centered on Augustan poetry, especially Ovid’s exilic writings; and also on Seneca’s prose writings, including an edition of De Otio and De Breuitate Vitae (Cambridge 2003). Current work includes a sequence of writings on Seneca’s Natural Questions, but his current interests extend to Silver Latin literature more generally, especially Silver epic and also Roman philosophical/scientific development in the early empire. Some recent articles: ‘Reading the waters: Seneca on the Nile in Natural Questions, Book 4a’, Classical Quarterly 57 (2007) 218-242. ‘Seneca on comets and ancient cometary theory in Natural Questions 7’, Ramus 36 (2007) 97-117. ‘Cold science: Seneca on hail and snow in Natural Questions 4B’. PCPhS 54 (2008) 209-236. ‘Politics and Narrative in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, in P. E. Knox, ed., Blackwell Companion to Ovid (Oxford 2009) 154-169. ‘Politics in Ovid’, in W. J. Dominik and J. Garthwaite, eds., Writing Politics in Imperial Rome (Leiden 2009) 203-224. ‘A. E. Housman and Ovid’s Ibis’, in D. Butterfield and C. Stray, edd., A. E. Housman the Scholar (London 2009) 95-116. Gareth Williams webpage.