Matthew Roller is a Romanist whose research and teaching are broadly concerned with the literature, history, art, philosophy, and culture of the ancient Roman world.  He is the author of three monographs: Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in Julio-Claudian Rome (Princeton University Press, 2001), Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, Values, and Status (Princeton University Press, 2006), and Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Professor Roller has broad interests in the relationship between monumentality and memory in ancient Rome, in the moral philosophy of the younger Seneca, in Roman reciprocity and social exchange, and in aristocratic competition. He is currently working on Roman legal advocacy, especially in the Centumviral Court, in the late Republic and early Imperial period.  This work is ultimately part of a book-length project investigating the arenas of competitive eloquence in the early Imperial period, from the Augustan age into the 2^nd century CE.

Professor Roller’s research has been supported by major awards from the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; he has also received smaller awards from diverse funders to support particular projects.

Professor Roller has been a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University since 1994. His service to the institution includes chairing the Classics Department for seven years and the Anthropology Department for one year. Also, from 2012 to 2014 he led the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ decennial accreditation effort, and from 2015 to 2020 he served as Vice Dean for Graduate Education and Centers & Programs in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

At the undergraduate level, Professor Roller teaches Latin courses from beginning to advanced, capstone courses for majors, freshman seminars, and also general courses on Roman history and civilization aimed at broader audiences of undergraduate students, including “The Roman Republic: History, Culture, and Afterlife,” and “The Roman Empire.”  He has also collaborated with colleagues from other departments to offer team-taught courses on broader humanistic topics.

At the graduate level, Professor Roller has taught research seminars on a wide variety of authors, texts, and topics, and regularly teaches the graduate Survey of Latin Literature.  In the past he has regularly taught a Classics proseminar.

See Curriculum Vitae for full details on past teaching.

“Competition in the Roman Empire—Structure, Characteristics, and New Arenas.” In C. Bubb and M. Peachin, eds., Medicine and Law under the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 45-65.

“Dining and hunting as courtly activities in the Roman empire.” In B. Kelly and A. Hug, eds., The Roman Emperor and his Court, c. 30 BC – c. AD 300 vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022) 318-48.

“Selfhood, exemplarity, and Cicero’s four personae: on constructing your self after your model and your model after your self.” In M. Niehoff and J. Levinson, eds., Self, Self-Fashioning and Individuality in Late Antiquity: New Perspectives (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 51–70.

“The rise of the Centumviral Court in the Augustan age: an alternative arena of aristocratic competition.” In K. Morrell, J. Osgood, and K. Welch, eds., The Alternative Augustan Age (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019), 266–81.

“Losing to Cicero: Asinius Pollio and the emergence of new arenas of competitive eloquence under Augustus.” In K.-J. Hölkeskamp and H. Beck, eds., Verlierer und Aussteiger in der ‚Konkurrenz unter Anwesenden:‘ Agonalität in der politischen Kultur des antiken Rom (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2019), 189–205.

“Amicable and hostile exchange in the culture of recitation.” In A. König and C. Whitton, eds., Roman Literature under Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian: Literary Interactions, AD 96 – 138 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 183–207.

“Precept(or) and example in Seneca.” In G. Williams and K. Volk, eds., Roman Reflections: Studies in Latin Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 129-56.

“Between unique and typical: Senecan exempla in a list.” In M. Lowrie and S. Lüdemann, eds., Exemplarity and Singularity. Thinking through Particulars in Philosophy, Literature, and Law (London: Routledge, 2015), 81-95.

“The Dialogue in Seneca’s Dialogues (and other moral essays).” In S. Bartsch and A. Schiesaro, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Seneca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 54-67.

“Teaching ‘Theory’ in Topical Graduate Seminars.” Classical World 108 (2015) 195-203. (Contribution to a special “Paedagogus” section on the topic “Literary theory and graduate and undergraduate Classics curricula,” ed. Nigel Nicholson)

“The Difference an Emperor Makes: Notes on the reception of the Roman Republican senate in the Imperial age.” Classical Receptions Journal 7 (2015) 11-30. (Special issue: “The Legacy of the Roman Republican Senate,” ed. Catherine Steel)

“Volgei nescia: On the Paradox of Praising Women’s Invisibility.” In A. Avramidou and D. Demetriou, eds., Approaching the Ancient Artifact: Representation, Narrative, and Function. A Festschrift in Honor of H. Alan Shapiro (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 175-83.

“On the intersignification of monuments in Augustan Rome.” American Journal of Philology 134 (2013) 119-31. (Special issue: “Intertextuality,” eds. Y. Baraz and C. Van den Berg)

“Politics and invective in Persius and Juvenal.” In S. Braund and J. Osgood, eds., A Companion to Persius and Juvenal (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 283-311.

“The consul(ar) as exemplum: Fabius Cunctator’s paradoxical glory.” In H. Beck, A. Duplá, M. Jehne, and F. Pina Polo, eds., Consuls and Res Publica: holding high office in the Roman Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 182-210.

“To whom am I speaking? The changing venues of competitive eloquence in the early empire.” In W. Blösel and K.-J. Hölkeskamp, eds., Von der militia equestris zur militia urbana: Prominenzrollen und Karrierefelder im antiken Rom (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011), 197–221 [.pdf]

“Culture-Based Approaches.” In A. Barchiesi and W. Scheidel, eds., Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 234-49.

“Demolished houses, monumentality, and memory in Roman culture.” Classical Antiquity 29 (2010) 117-180.

“The exemplary past in Roman historiography and culture.” In A. Feldherr, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 214–30.

“The politics of aristocratic competition: innovation in Livy and Augustan Rome.” In W. J. Dominik, J. Garthwaite, and P. Roche, eds., Writing Politics in Imperial Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 153–72.

“Exemplarity in Roman culture: the cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia.” Classical Philology 99 (2004) 1–56.