Staff profile

I work on the cultural and intellectual history of the Eastern Mediterranean world during the Roman and late antique periods. After my first degree in Milan, I went to Oxford for an M.Phil. and a D.Phil., and later held fellowships at Harvard University Dumbarton Oaks, and at the Princeton University Society of Fellows (2015-18). I joined Durham in 2018, and, since 2020, I am Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Currently, I am on research leave with the support of the British Academy and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In MT 2024, I am Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

My current research focuses on the emergence and development of Syriac literature and culture in the broader context of the Graeco-Roman Near East and the diffusion of Christianity. I am writing a monograph on this subject, with a focus on the encounters of Syriac culture with Graeco-Roman civilization. This project brings together literature and epigraphic and documentary sources both in Greek and in Syriac, and it focuses on education and schooling as the lens through which to assess and study the history of culture.

I have recently published a book on Greek and Syriac literature in dialogue form by Christian authors during late antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2019). These dialogues, on religious, philosophical, and political subjects, show that the classical dialogue form did not disappear with the rise of Christianity but was instead transformed, and reinvigorated, alongside of cultural and religious change. This vibrant tradition of writing in dialogue form (at least sixty dialogues survive until the end of the sixth century CE, only in Greek and Syriac) attests to the emergence and the development of a particular culture of debate on theological and philosophical matters. Academic reviewers describe this book as "a significant advance in scholarship" (JECS), "opening up the field" (BMCR), and "an opus magnum" (MEG). Read more here.

I am also interested in the translation of Greek texts into Syriac and Arabic, and, more broadly, in the reception of Graeco-Roman thought in early Christianity and Islam. I have published on the Syriac and Arabic translations of Aristotle’s Poetics, on a Syriac dialogue with Socrates on the soul, and on the Syriac translations of Ps.-Isocrates, Plutarch, Lucian, and Themistius. One of these texts surviving only in Syriac, a philosophical oration by Themistius known as On Virtue, may reveal Themistius’ lukewarm engagement with emperor Julian’s project of pagan restoration.

My research is supported by the British Academy (Mid-Career Fellowship, 2024), All Souls College Oxford (Visiting Fellowship 2024), the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study (Membership, 2023), the American Philosophical Society (Franklin Grant, 2018), the Princeton University Society of Fellows (Behrman-Cotsen Fellowship in Humanistic Studies, 2015-18), the Harvard University Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Junior Fellowship 2012 and Summer Fellowship 2010), the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research (Leventis Graduate Award, 2012), the Classical Association (bursary for research at the Fondation Hardt, 2012), the University of Oxford Faculty of Classics (Craven Scholarship, 2010), St. John’s College Oxford (Graduate and North Senior Scholarships, 2010-13), All Souls College Oxford (E.O. James Bequest Grant, 2009), the A.G. Leventis Foundation (Scholarship, 2009), and the Catholic University, Milan (ISU Award, 2007).

Together with Mara Nicosia, I am editing a volume, for Cambridge University Press, on the history of Syriac Studies as an academic discipline, which develops upon an international conference held in Durham in March 2024. I am also a regular contributor to the Dumbarton Oaks/HMML Syriac Summer School. With the support of Harvard University and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, this programme is designed for doctoral students and early career scholars who lack the opportunity to learn Syriac at their home institution.

 

 

 

Esteem Indicators

2024: All Souls College, Oxford: Visiting Fellowship

2023: British Academy: Mid-Career Fellowship

2023: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton: Membership

2015-18: Princeton Society of Fellows: Behrman-Cotsen Fellowship

 

Areas of Research Supervision

• Late Roman Literature and Intellectual History
• Syriac Studies
• Early Christianity
• Late Antiquity
• The Graeco-Syro-Arabic Translation Movement

 

Current Postdoctoral Mentorship

Dr Karl Heiner Dahm (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow): The Roman Household in Late Antique Church Conflicts 

Dr Jacob Lollar (British Academy International Fellow): Syriac Manuscripts and the Construction of Culture: Para-Biblica in the Late Antique and Medieval Middle East

Dr Mara Nicosia (British Academy Newton International Fellow): The Syriac Rhetorical Tradition between Greco-Roman paideia and Arabic Aristotelianism

Dr Sofia Puchkova (Visiting Researcher): Power and 'Otherness:' Situating Late Antique Near Eastern Biblical Exegesis in the Empire

 

Current and Past PhD Students

Priscilla Buongiorno (first supervisor): Women's Prototypes: Iconography of the Feminine in Early Christian Rome.

Matthieu Isbell (first supervisor): Syriac in the Roman World between Trajan and Justinian

Cédrik Michel (awarded 2024; first supervisor): The Rhetorical Use of 'the Barbarian' in Late Antiquity: from the Battle of Adrianople to the Sack of Rome (378-410 CE). Currently: Lecturer in Late Roman / Medieval History at Lancaster University

 

Rodrigo Ballon Villanueva (second supervisor): Early Medieval Theories of Relations (4th–9th Centuries).

Thomas Sale (second supervisor): Tutelary Deities in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East.

Alison Ewins (second supervisor): Religious Terminology in the Roman Near East, 63 BC - 284 AD.

Lila Knight (awarded 2024; second supervisor): Drafting an Empire: Palmyrene Manpower and Military Identity.

Cesare Sinatti (awarded 2022; second supervisor): The Mind Through All Things - Stoic Cosmic Psychology and its Role in the Unification of the Cosmos.

 

Teaching

Academic Year 2022/23
CLAS3671 - The Late Roman World
CLAS44430 - Edessa: The Athens of the East

Academic Year 2021/22
CLAS3671 - The Late Roman World
CLAS44430 - Edessa: The Athens of the East

Academic Year 2020/21
CLAS2911 - Roman Religion
CLAS3671 - The Later Roman Empire
CLAS44430 - Edessa: The Athens of the East

Academic Year 2019/20
CLAS1101 - Early Greek Philosophy
CLAS1541/2541/3641 - Intermediate Greek A
CLAS2911 - Roman Religion
CLAS3671 - The Later Roman Empire

Academic Year 2018/19
CLAS3671 - The Later Roman Empire
CLAS40130 - Classical Research Methods and Resources

 

Departmental Service

2024/25: Chair of the Board of Examiners

2023/24: Research Leave

2022/23: EDI Director and Athena Swan Lead (AS Silver Award Application)

2021/22: Director of Research

2020/21: Director of Joint Honours Degrees and Elective Students Mentor

2019/20: Research Seminar and WiP Seminar Coordinator

2018/19: Research Seminar and WiP Seminar Coordinator

 

 

Office Hours and Academic Mentorship Hours

By appointment.

 

Outreach and School Talks

I am happy to give school talks and papers on topics related to the history of the late Roman empire, late antiquity, Roman religion, Syriac studies, and the Graeco-Syro-Arabic translation movement.

 

Authored book

• Rigolio, A. (2019). Christians in Conversation: A Guide to Late Antique Dialogues in Greek and Syriac. Oxford University Press
• Wilberding, J., Trompeter, J., & Rigolio, A. (2018). Michael of Ephesus: On Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 10 with Themistius: On Virtue. Bloomsbury

Book review

• Rigolio, A. (online). Jażdżewska, K. Greek Dialogue in Antiquity. Post-Platonic Transformations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Classical Review,
• Rigolio, A. (online). LaValle Norman, D. The aesthetics of hope in late Greek imperial literature: Methodius of Olympus' Symposium and the crisis of the third century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019
• Rigolio, A. (2022). Flower, R., and Ludlow, M., eds. Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2020

Chapter in book

• Rigolio, A. (in press). The Rhetorical Tradition in Syriac: Overview. In F. Woerther, J. Ross, R. Copeland, & P. Mack (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Rhetoric. Cambridge University Press
• Rigolio, A. (2022). Syriac Sources. In T. Kaizer (Ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East (76-85). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119037354.ch8
• Rigolio, A. (2021). Syriac. In D. Feeney, & J. Lande (Eds.), How Literatures Begin: A Global History (168-190). Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ
• Rigolio, A. (2019). La "philosophie populaire" syriaque: un mode de vie?. In E. Fiori (Ed.), La philosophie en syriaque (129-138). Société d'Études Syriaques
• Rigolio, A. (2019). Plutarch in the Syriac Tradition: a Preliminary Overview. In K. Oikonomopoulou, & S. Xenophontos (Eds.), Brill's Companion to the Reception of Plutarch (361-372). Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409446_023
• Rigolio, A. (2018). The Syriac De Exercitatione: a Lost Edifying Piece Attributed to Plutarch (with English Translation). In P. Mack, & J. North (Eds.), The Afterlife of Plutarch (1-21). University of London Press
• Rigolio, A. (2017). Erostrophus, a Syriac dialogue with Socrates on the soul. In A. Cameron, & N. Gaul (Eds.), Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium (20-31). Routledge
• Rigolio, A. (2016). Syriac Translations of Plutarch, Lucian and Themistius: a Gnomic Format for an Instructional Purpose?. In P. Gemeinhardt, L. Van Hoof, & P. Van Nuffelen (Eds.), Education and Religion in Late Antique Christianity: Reflections, Social Contexts and Genres (73-85). Routledge
• Rigolio, A. (2015). Some Syriac Monastic Encounters with Greek Literature. In M. Doerfler, E. Fiano, & K. Smith (Eds.), Syriac Encounters. Papers Presented at the Sixth North American Syriac Symposium Held at Duke University (26-29 June 2011) (295-304). Peeters: Leuven
• Rigolio, A. (2014). Translation of Greek Texts in Late Antiquity. In G. Giannakis (Ed.), Brill Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics (436-441). Brill: Leiden
• Rigolio, A. (2013). Plutarch in the Syriac Tradition, an Overview. In G. Pace, & P. Volpe Cacciatore (Eds.), Gli Scritti di Plutarco: Tradizione, Traduzione, Ricezione, Commento. Atti del IX Convegno Internazionale della International Plutarch Society (Ravello, 29 sett. - 11 ott. 2011) (361-369). DʼAuria Editore: Naples

Journal Article

• Rigolio, A. (2022). Towards a History of Syriac Rhetoric in Late Antiquity. Millennium, 19(1), 197-218. https://doi.org/10.1515/mill-2022-0008
• Rigolio, A. (2013). From Sacrifice to the Gods to the Fear of God: Omissions, Additions and Changes in the Syriac Translations of Plutarch, Lucian and Themistius
• Rigolio, A. (2013). Aristotleʼs Poetics in Syriac and Arabic Translations: Readings of Tragedy