Adrian Tronson

Research

My area of research covers the history and political rhetoric of Classical and Hellenistic Greece and the Roman Republic and early Empire, and ancient drama. I am interested in public discourse in literary and epigraphic sources and in various genres and contexts – the way ruling powers, ancient and modern, use words and concepts, as well as events, to influence public thinking.

Many of my publications trace the origins of historical and political myths and their revivals in ancient and modern contexts. Currently I am working on a book on the evolution and use of the term 'the Hellenes' as a political concept in antiquity and modern times, and on a study of the role of Alexander the Great in the political thought of the Hellenistic Jews.

Positions held

Since 2004 I have been an Honorary Research Associate and part-time instructor at UNB. Between 1988-2002 I was Assistant and then Associate Professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland. Before that, apart from two years as tutor in the department of History at Harvard and a Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Concordia University (Montreal), I was a Junior Lecturer and then Lecturer in the Department of Classical Languages at the University of South Africa between 1969 and 1985.

Teaching

I have given courses at the undergraduate level in Greek and Latin Language and literature, New Testament authors, Roman Civilization, Alexander the Great, Greek and Roman Drama, Ancient History (Classical and Hellenistic Greece and Republican and early Imperial Rome), as well as seminars, in subjects such as, ‘Greece and Persia’, ‘Herodotus and Historiography’, ‘Thucydides and Imperialism’, ‘Caesar and the Invention of Europe’ and in individual authors at the honours and graduate level.

Selected publications

“Satyrus the Peripatetic and the Marriages of Philip II", Journal of Hellenic Studies, 104 (1984), 116-126.

"Vergil, the Augustans and the Invention of Cleopatra's Suicide: One Asp or Two?" Vergilius 43 (1998). 31-50.

“What the Poet Saw: Octavian's Triple Triumph, 29 B.C.: Jeremiah Markland's Conjectures at Propertius 3.11.52-53", Acta Classica 42 (1999), 171-186.

“The History and Mythology of "Pericles' Panhellenic Congress" in Plutarch's Life of Pericles, 17" (EMC/CV.19.3 (2000), 1-35.

"Pompey the Barbarian: Caesar's Representation of "the Other" in Bellum Civile III: in M.A. Joyal (ed.). In Altum: Seventy-Five Years of Classical Studies in Newfoundland (2001).

Also reviews in Classical Views, The Classical Review, Mouseion, The Historian.