Overview
I am interested in the relationship between politics, philosophy, and literature in Greco-Roman antiquity. My first book project, Cooperative Antagonism: Debating Culture in Classical Greek Democracy, argues that classical Greek democracies thrived on polarized dissent. Focusing on the ubiquitous practice of antilogia (opposed speeches), I demonstrate how Greek public speakers systematically embraced their rivals’ premises to argue for radically opposite conclusions. I term this agonistic yet intimate engagement "cooperative antagonism." By preventing the calcification of political difference, cooperative antagonism acted not as a threat to civic cohesion, but as an engine of political and cultural negotiation. It was through the constant clash of opposed positions that a shared political world was legitimized, provocative conceptual frameworks were tested, and new cultural paradigms were disseminated across the Greek public sphere.
Several articles related to this project have appeared in journals or are forthcoming. For my second book project, I will turn to philosophical dialogue, tracing its emergence in the fourth century BCE as a groundbreaking response to the dominance of opposed speeches in the democratic public sphere. I am co-editor of Hippias of Elis: Texts, Translation, and Commentary (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), and editor of a collaborative volume provisionally titled Forms of Theory: Literature and Philosophy in Classical Greece. I hold a PhD in Classical Philology from Harvard, a BA/MA from the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, and an M.Mus. in Piano Performance from the Conservatory of Salerno.
Selected Publications
“Paradoxes of common sense: epideixis, treatises, and antilogy in classical Greece,” American Journal of Philology, 146(3): 451–84, 2025.
“The imaginary of polarization: tragedy, assembly, and stasis narratives.” Transactions of the American Philological Association, 155(2): 341–69, 2025.
“Death, memory, intertextuality: warrior catalogues in Aeschylus’ Persians,” Classical Philology 118(3), 291–316, 2023.
“Legal theory, sophistic antilogy: Antiphon’s Tetralogies,” in Our beloved Polites. Studies presented to Peter J. Rhodes, edited by Leão, D. et al., Oxford: Archaeopress, 2022, pp. 121–33.
“The shape of early Greek utopia,” Classical Quarterly 71(2), 2021, 467–81.
