Dr Daniel Anderson
I write on Ancient Greek poetry down to the Hellenistic period, with a particular focus on issues of formal structure and their intersection with the history of the book. In addition to my role at Merton, I am currently Visiting Fellow at the Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems (VIEWS) project at the University of Cambridge (Michaelmas 2025), and Research Fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies in London. I am also Teaching Associate in Classics for the Astrophoria Foundation Year at Oxford.
I sit on the Classical Association Journals Board and the Editorial Board of the Hellenic Society journal ARGO. In 2023, I was invited to organise the 69th Entretiens sur l'Antiquité classique together with the late Raffaella Cribiore. This resulted in the volume Spaces for Learning in Antiquity (Vandoevres 2024). My current project on ‘Modular Structure in Classical Poetry’ is supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme research grant (2025–28).
Prior to joining Merton, I took my MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, where I was College Scholar at St John’s College and recipient of a Doctoral Award from SSHRC; I then held a Research Fellowship at Coventry University.
My research explores form and formal structure in poetic texts, especially where this intersects with the history of the book in antiquity. I have written on the structure of Hellenistic epigram collections, the nature of naming in poetry and self-naming by poets, texts within performance culture, hybridity and catalogue structure, and geometrical conceptions of the body in antiquity.
My current project looks at provisional structure in ancient poetry and aesthetics. Two key concepts are 'modularity' and the 'open work'. When applied to works of art or literature, modularity refers to objects whose parts are structured in such a way as to be reordered or exchanged in an anticipated future version, edition, copy, or rendition. Ancient poets and artists were aware of ancient processes of changes and they sometimes looked to anticipate and influence how their work might in future come to be refashioned in new forms. The qualification 'open', by contrast, refers to future change which is not predetermined by the original author of a work. Despite common assumptions about the privileging of wholeness and unity in ancient aesthetics—assumptions based on Plato and Aristotle—modular and open work was widespread and central to the practices and aesthetic concerns of ancient poets. Even Plato and Aristotle, at the heart of their discussions of organic unity in Phaedrus and the Poetics give some of the best examples of modular and open practices in the phenomena they reject, such as the Midas epigram, or Agathon’s ‘thrown-in’ odes (embolima). The project also investigates indications of provisional structure across the material evidence, above all papyri.
I teach all aspects of Ancient Greek language and literature. My Teaching includes the options Early Greek Hexameter Poetry (Homer, Hesiod, Homeric Hymns), Greek Core (Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Gorgias, Thucydides, Plato), and Texts and Contexts (Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes). In terms of Greek language, I teach grammar, set texts, unseens, and prose composition.
Current PhD supervision: Adeola Eze Reception of Ancient Book Formats in Contemporary Poetry and Art (Coventry University)
‘Callimachus’ epigram theatre’, in J.J.H. Klooster et al. (eds.), Hellenistica Groningana 27: Crisis and Resilience in Hellenistic Poetry (Groningen, 2025) 15–32.
‘Early writing metaphors in performance’, Mnemosyne 78.2, Special edition: Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World: Textualization, ed. R. Zelnick-Abramovitz, M. Finkelberg, and D. Shalev (2025) 247–72.
‘Drama in the classroom; classrooms on stage’, in D. Anderson (ed.), Les espaces du savoir dans l’antiquité; Spaces for Learning in Antiquity (Vandœuvres, 2024) 25–68.
(with Raffaella Cribiore†) ‘Introduction: Spaces for learning in antiquity’, in D. Anderson (ed.), Les espaces du savoir dans l’antiquité; Spaces for Learning in Antiquity (Vandœuvres, 2024) 1–24.
(ed.) Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique, Tome 69. Les espaces du savoir dans l’antiquité; Spaces for Learning in Antiquity (Vandœuvres, 2024)
‘Measuring up: the Greek analogies behind Vitruvius’ geometry of the body’, Ramus 52.2, Special edition: Homo bene figuratus: Beyond the Vitruvian Man, ed. M. Hanses, E. Giusti, and G. Laterza (2023) 121–35.
‘Semantic satiation for poetic effect’, Classical Quarterly 71.1 (2021) 34–51.
'An unnoticed pun in Hipponax fr. 3a W. = 2 D.', Philologus 165.1 (2021) 147–52.
‘Species of ambiguity in Semonides fr. 7’, Cambridge Classical Journal 64 (2018) 1–22.
‘Location and motif in Meleager’s coronis (A.P. 12.257)’, Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 73 (2014) 9–23.
Forthcoming:
‘The so-called poetic sphragis and Hellenistic ἐπισφραγίζω’, in Xiu (ed.), Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song vol. 6, Mnemosyne Supplements, Brill, Leiden (2026/2027).
‘Hellenistic book cultures beyond Alexandria’, in J.J.H. Klooster et al. (eds.), Hellenistica Groningana 28: Hellenistic Poetry Beyond Alexandria, Peeters Publishers, Groningen (2026).
‘Self-naming in Hipponax’, in V. Cazzato and E. Prodi (eds.), The Limping Muse: Hipponax the Poet, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2026).
