Classics
Staff

I was born and grew up on a remote hill-farm half-way between Hawick and Melrose in the Scottish Borders, and was the only member of my family who was not obsessed with the breeding of racehorses (though my mother, who was born in Edinburgh and attended Edinburgh College of Art, did have other interests—such as painting racehorses).

From the age of eight I was sent away to English boarding schools where I received a thorough training in Latin and Greek; and in my late teens I developed an obsession of my own—collecting Roman imperial coins. I published my first article, on Diocletian’s coinage reform, in 1982, being somehow under the impression that it was necessary to publish to get into Oxford. Oxford responded with a Scholarship to Exeter College, in 1983. After graduating four years later, I began my DPhil, a commentary on Cicero’s Pro Sulla, under the supervision of R.G.M.Nisbet, who had edited In Pisonem in 1961. In my last three years at Oxford (1988-91) I held a Senior Scholarship at Lincoln College concurrently with a Lectureship at Merton College. In 1991 I finished my doctorate and took up a Lectureship, later a Senior Lectureship, at the University of Leeds; and I remained at Leeds for fifteen years before finally returning to Scotland, to the University of Edinburgh, in 2006.

A Roman historian and a Latinist

I consider myself equally a Roman historian and a Latinist; Cicero’s speeches allow me to combine the two specialisms in equal measure. Cicero is an author who reveals himself to an exceptional degree in his writings (not all of which were intended for publication); so, by close examination of what he has written, it becomes possible to see what is passing through his mind. That, together with the matchless beauty of his prose, is for me the main attraction of this author. I have published three books on Cicero, all of them concerned in different ways with tracing the path of his thought through a text.

First was my textual edition and commentary on Pro Sulla, published in the Cambridge “orange” series (1996); then followed two volumes of annotated translations for Oxford World’s Classics, Cicero: Defence Speeches (2000) and Cicero: Political Speeches (2006). Currently I am working on a monograph on the Catilinarians for OUP (USA): this will be the first ever book on these speeches (excluding commentaries) in any language; and I hope eventually to write a further commentary, on Pro Murena.

I am very happy to supervise postgraduate students who share my passion for Ciceronian and Roman oratory, or who wish to work on any topic connected with the political history of the Ciceronian period.