Mario Erasmo Associate Professor of Classics Undergraduate Coordinator Associate Director of Classics Study Abroad in Rome International Editorial Board Member of Mortality 235 Park Hall Phone: 706 542-2188 FAX: 706 542-8503 E-Mail: merasmo@uga.edu

Special Interests

• Roman Drama
• Latin Poetry: Archaic to Neoteric, Horace and Silver Epic
• Death Studies

Academic History

• Ph.D. 1995 Yale University, Classical Languages and Literatures
• M.Phil. 1993 Yale University, Classical Languages and Literatures
• M.A. 1992 Yale University, Classical Languages and Literatures
• M.A. 1990 University of Ottawa, Roman Studies
• B.A. Honours 1989 Carleton University, Classical Studies

Research

My research focus is on Roman drama, Latin poetry, and Roman Funerary Studies. I take a semiotic approach to explore the inter and intratextuality of texts within their cultural contexts. Archaic Latin Verse (Focus Publishing, 2nd ed: 2004) is a text and commentary edition of Latin verse from carmina to the epics of Livius, Naevius and Ennius, including select plays from Livius, Naevius, Ennius, Caecilius Statius, Accius, Pacuvius and fragments from the satires of Lucilius. My second book, Roman Tragedy: Theatre to Theatricality (Austin, 2004) was the first monograph devoted to Roman tragedy in over 125 years. I take a chronological and semiotic approach to the plays that restores them to their metatheatrical and cultural contexts. My current monograph, Reading Death in Ancient Rome, combines all three of my research interests: I examine death ritual as a cultural and literary intertext of epitaphs, drama, and epic. As a member of the International Editorial Board of the journal Mortality, I participate in the multi-disciplinary International Conferences on the Social Contexts of Death, Dying, and Disposal (affiliated with the CDAS - University of Bath), contribute articles and book reviews, and introduce the Journal and Conference to the growing number of Classicists specializing in death studies. The UGA symposium, "The Theatre of Pompey: Staging the Self through Roman Architecture" which I co-organized with Penelope Davies examines the connection between architecture, Pompey's self-representation and theatre (re)presentations.

Books

• Reading Death in Ancient Rome (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2008)
• Roman Tragedy: Theatre to Theatricality (University of Texas Press: Austin, TX, 2004)
    Reviewed: NTQ 22.1 (2006), 100-101; AJPh 127.1 (2006), 149-152; JCT 5 (2005), 25; BMCR 2005.07.53/Reply 2005.09.23
• Archaic Latin Verse (Focus Publishing: Newburyport, MA 2001; Second Edition: 2004)

Articles

• “Enticing Tantalus in Seneca's Thyestes” MD 56 (2006), 185-198
• “Birds of a Feather? Ennius and Horace, Ode 2.20” Latomus 65.2 (2006), 369-377
• “Mourning Pompey: Lucan and the Poetics of Death Ritual” Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History: Collection Latomus 12 volume 287 (2005), 344-360
• “Staging Brutus: Roman Legend and the Death of Caesar” Essays in Honor of Gordon Williams: Twenty Five Years at Yale (New Haven, 2001) 101-114
• “Among the Dead in Ancient Rome” Mortality 6.1 (2001) 31-43

Book Reviews

• The Ghosts of the Past: Latin Literature, the Dead, and Rome's Transition to a Principate. By Basil Dufallo. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2007, 75 pp, ISBN 0-8142-1044-9 for Mortality (Forthcoming)
• Spirits of the Dead: Roman Funerary Commemoration in Western Europe. By Maureen Carroll. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 352 pp., ISBN 0-199-29107-1 for Mortality (Forthcoming)
• Picturing Death in Classical Athens: The Evidence of the White Lekythoi, John H. Oakley. Cambridge University Press, 2004 for Mortality 10.3 (2005), 226-227
• Rome at War: Farms, Families, and Death in the Middle Republic, Nathan Rosenstein. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2004 and Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome, Anthony Corbeil. Princeton University Press, 2004 for Mortality 10.2 (2005), 162-163
• Childhood, Class and Kin in the Roman World, ed. Suzanne Dixon. Routledge: London, 2001 for Mortality 7.2 (2002), 221

Courses Taught

The courses that I teach at the Undergraduate and Graduate levels reflect my research focus and methodology: Early Latin Poetry, Plautus, Terence, Catullus, Horace, Seneca, Silver Epic Poetry, Greek Lyric Poetry, Hellenistic Poetry, Graduate level surverys on the development of Latin Verse and Prose, and introductory courses in Roman Culture, Greek Culture, and Classical Mythology. For the Classics Studies Abroad Rome Program, I developed a course called, "Reading Rome" in which ancient texts are placed in their chronological and topographic contexts and read within the cultural development of specifice sites and monuments of later periods (late antiquity, medieval, renaissance, baroque, neo-classical, Italian unification, fascist, post-modern).

Fontana delle Tartarughe Rome 2007