Joseph B. Solodow
Lecturer, Department of Classics
In 1980–81 he held a Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. Since becoming associated with the Yale Department of Classics in 1985, he has given a number of courses, such as the history of Latin literature, Virgil, Ovid, elegiac poetry, images of early Rome in Latin literature, and Latin prose composition.
His research interests lie in Latin literature and philology and in ancient historiography — more particularly in Catullus, the Augustan poets and Livy, Latin prose style, and the history of the language, all the way to its Romance descendants. He considers his forte to be the use of philology as a tool of literary criticism. His teaching, which ranges more widely, includes western literature read in translation.
His major publications are The Latin Particle Quidem and The World of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Cato the Elder, Catullus, the Eclogues, the Ars Amatoria, Livy, and Castiglione have figured as the subjects of articles. The Modern Language Association awarded the Scaglione Translation Prize to his rendering of G. B. Conte's history of Latin literature into English. His latest book, Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages was published in 2010. At the moment he is preparing a stylistic historiographical commentary on Livy XXI.
