Peter A. O'Connell

I received my bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard and an M. Phil. degree from the University of Cambridge, where I was a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow. From 2011-2013, I was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford. My research and teaching focus on ancient rhetoric and poetics, Greek literature of all periods, and Classical Athens.

I am the author of The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory (University of Texas Press 2017) and am now working on a project about the relationship between rhetoric and accounting. I have also recently published articles on Sappho, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Attic oratory and procedure.

I have taught Greek and Latin at all levels to undergraduates and graduate students, as well as courses on ancient rhetoric and Greek and Roman culture. I have directed M.A. theses on Homer, Herodotus, the Hippocratics, and Aeschylus and M.A. teaching projects on the Catilinarian conspiracy, Vergil, and Petronius. I have also served on many thesis committees in Classics and Communication Studies on topics ranging from patristics to psychoanalysis.

For the 2019-2020 academic year, I was a fellow of UGA’s Willson Center for Humanities and Arts (fall) and of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC (spring).

I received the Sandy Beaver Excellence in Teaching Award in 2023.

Book

The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2017

Articles, Chapters, and Reviews 

“Institutions, Character, and Relevance: Keeping to the Point in Dokimasiai.” 12,500 word chapter forthcoming in Keeping to the Point in Athenian Forensic Oratory: Law, Character and Rhetoric, edited by Alberto Esu and Edward M. Harris. Edinburgh University Press

“Democracy and Rhetoric in Action: The Attic Orators.” 11,500-word chapter forthcoming in The Cambridge History of Rhetoric, volume 1 - Rhetoric of the Ancient World (to 350 CE), edited by Harvey Yunis and Henriette van der Blom

“Deixis and Givenness in the Lysianic Corpus: The Role of Οὗτος in Courtroom Rhetoric.” Classical Philology 118 (2023) 1-26

“Facts, Time, and Imagination in Demosthenes and Aeschines.” In The Orators and their Treatment of the Recent Past, edited by Aggelos Kapellos. De Gruyter (2023) 323-342

“Repetition and the Creation of Sappho.” In Repetition, Communication, and Meaning in the Ancient World, edited by Deborah Beck. Brill (2021) 158-186

“How often did the Athenian Dikasteria meet? A Reappraisal.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies (2020) 60: 324-341

Review of Speeches for the Dead: Essays on Plato’s Menexenus, edited by Harold Parker and Jan Maximilian Robitzsch. Rhetorica (2020) 38: 229-232

“The Story about the Jury.” In Forensic Narratives in Athenian Courts, edited by Dimos Spatharas and Mike Edwards. Routledge (2020) 81-101

“Homer and His Legacy in Gregory of Nazianzus’ ‘On his own affairs.’” Journal of Hellenic Studies (2019) 139: 147-171

“Charaxus Arrived with a Full Ship! The Poetics of Welcome in Sappho’s Brothers Song and the Charaxus Song Cycle.” Classical Antiquity (2018) 37: 236-266

“The Theatre of Oratory.” Review of The Theatre of Justice: Aspects of Performance in Greco-Roman Oratory and Rhetoric, edited by S. Papaioannou, A. Serafim, and B. da Vela. Classical Review (2018) 68: 34-37. 

“Facing the Challenges of Reconstructing Ancient Buildings.” Response to “Situating Deliberative Rhetoric in Ancient Greece: The Bouleutêrion as a Venue for Oratorical Performance,” by C. L. Johnstone and R. J. Graff. Advances in the History of Rhetoric (2018) 21: 89-96

“Enargeia, Persuasion, and the Vividness Effect in Attic Forensic Oratory.” Advances in the History of Rhetoric (2017) 20: 225-251

“New Evidence for Hexametric Incantations in Attic Curse Tablets.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik (2017) 201: 41-46

“The Rhetoric of Visibility and Invisibility in Antiphon 5, On the Murder of Herodes.” Classical Quarterly (2016) 66: 46-58

 “Showing, Knowing, and the Existence of Tekhnai in Hippocrates, On the Art.” Classical Philology (2015) 110: 215-226

“Hyperides and Epopteia: A New Fragment of the Defense of Phryne.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies (2013) 53: 90-116

Entries on “Agamemnon,” “games-Greek,” “Isocrates,” “Menelaus,” “Orestes” and “Triptolemus.” In The Virgil Encyclopedia, edited by R. F. Thomas and J. M. Ziolkowski. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 2013