History Notes: Historiography and the Ancient Commentarial Tradition

CIVILIZATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME

SPEAKER: Rachel Love, Harvard, Department of Classics

Rachel Love joined the Department of the Classics at Harvard after completing her doctorate at Yale University in 2019 and her B.A. at Tulane University in 2013. Her research is primarily focused on Imperial Latin prose, specifically historiography, epitome, and other forms of 'sub-literary' writing. Within this area, she is particularly interested in the legacy and influence of Republican writing forms on the literature of the Empire. 

Her first monograph, Writing after Livy, is currently under review at Oxford University Press. The book explores the culture of historiographical epitome in Latin literature from the 1st to 5th centuries CE and argues that epitomes, which have long been treated as aberrant symptoms of decline within Latin literature, are instead creative works of history that are integral to the character of Roman historiography.