Overview
I am interested in the relationship between literary form, politics, and philosophy in Graeco-Roman antiquity, especially in classical Greek texts. My first book project, provisionally titled A Grammar of Democracy: Antilogy, Politics, and Literature in Classical Greece, focuses on the most widespread form of public discourse in classical Greece: antilogy, or the delivery of opposed speeches before an audience. Traversing a multitude of cultural fields—from citizen assemblies to theater plays, from forensic trials to intellectual shows—the communicative format of antilogy created a shared conceptual and political language that tied together democracy, literature, and philosophy.
Articles related to this project have appeared in several research journals. In other ongoing projects, I trace the emergence of Socratic dialogue as a groundbreaking political and literary response to the dominance of opposed speeches in the Greek public sphere. I am also currently co-editing a forthcoming collaborative commentary to the polymath Hippias of Elis for Oxford University Press. I hold a PhD in Classical Philology from Harvard, a BA/MA from the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, and a M.Mus. in Piano Performance from the Conservatory of Salerno.
Selected Publications
“Paradoxes of common sense: epideixis, treatises, and antilogy in classical Greece,” American Journal of Philology, 146(3): 451–84, 2025.
“The imaginary of polarization: tragedy, assembly, and stasis narratives.” Transactions of the American Philological Association, 155(2): 341–69, 2025.
“Death, memory, intertextuality: warrior catalogues in Aeschylus’ Persians,” Classical Philology 118(3), 291–316, 2023.
“Legal theory, sophistic antilogy: Antiphon’s Tetralogies,” in Our beloved Polites. Studies presented to Peter J. Rhodes, edited by Leão, D. et al., Oxford: Archaeopress, 2022, pp. 121–33.
“The shape of early Greek utopia,” Classical Quarterly 71(2), 2021, 467–81.