Dr Mary Whitby

Non-stipendiary Lecturer in Classical Greek

I studied Classics at Oxford (BA, 1974 and MA, 1982) and Edinburgh (PhD, 1981), and have undertaken research on late antique Greek poetry, which remains my primary research interest.

Since 1993, I have been a General Editor, and for a number years senior General Editor (with Professor Gillian Clark, Bristol, and Professor Mark Humphries, Swansea) of the Liverpool University Press series Translated Texts for Historians.  This series has played an important role in making the history and culture of Late Antiquity teachable to those without knowledge of ancient languages.

Publications

Books

Articles and Research Papers

  • ‘A learned spiritual ladder: towards an interpretation of George of Pisidia's hexameter poem On human life’, in K. Spanoudakis, ed., Nonnus of Panopolis in Context (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2014), pp. 435-57
  • 'The Bible Hellenized: “Eudocia’s” Homeric centos and Nonnus’ St John paraphrase’, in J.H.D. Scourfield, ed., Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity: Inheritance, Authority and Change (Wales: Classical Press of Wales, 2007), pp. 193-229
  • 'The St Polyeuktos epigram (AP 1.10): a literary perspective’, in S.F. Johnson, ed., Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 159-87
  • ‘The devil in disguise: the end of George of Pisidia’s Hexaemeron reconsidered’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 115 (1995), pp. 116-31
  • 'From Moschus to Nonnus: the evolution of the Nonnian style’, in N. Hopkinson, ed., Studies in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus, Cambridge Philological Society Supplementary Volume 17 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 99-155
  • 'The occasion of Paul the Silentiary's Ekphrasis of S. Sophia’, The Classical Quarterly 35 (1985), pp. 215-28