Matthew Roller
Professor
B.A., Stanford University, 1988
M.A., University of California at Berkeley, 1990
Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, 1994
Office: Gilman 102
Phone: 410-516-5095
E-mail: mroller@jhu.edu
Matthew Roller is a Romanist who is engaged with the literature, history, art, philosophy, and culture generally of the ancient Roman world. He is the author of two monographs. The most recent, Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, Values, and Status, appeared in 2006 from Princeton University Press. This book investigates the social practices and ideologies associated with the three bodily dispositions--reclining, sitting, and standing--that were available to Romans of different ages, sexes, and social statuses when they dined. His earlier book, Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in Julio-Claudian Rome, was published in 2001 by Princeton University Press. This book examines the processes by which aristocrats of the early Imperial period negotiated the nature and scope of the Roman emperor's authority in the context of the emerging autocratic regime. Roller's current book-scale project, "Exemplarity in Ancient Roman Culture," examines the Roman habit of extracting from the past models and standards to guide behavior in the present. A prolegomenon to this project appeared as "Exemplarity in ancient Rome: the cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia," Classical Philology 99 (2004) 1-56. His special interest in the relationship between monumentality and memory is explored in "Demolished houses, monumentality, and memory in Roman Culture," Classical Antiquity 29 (2010) 117-180. Roller held a Forschungsstipendium from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation during academic year 2007-08, pursuing this project in cooperation with colleagues at the University of Cologne. He has also held a Solmsen Fellowship in the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Junior Fellowship awarded by the American Council of Learned Societies.
Professor Roller has been at Johns Hopkins since 1994.
Recent Papers
“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 [.pdf]
“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 [.pdf]
“Demolished houses, monumentality, and memory in Roman culture.” Classical Antiquity 29 (2010) 117-180 "[.pdf]
“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 [.pdf]
“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 [.pdf]
“Exemplarity in Roman culture: the cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia.” Classical Philology 99 (2004) 1–56 [.pdf]
Working Papers
Cornelia: on making one’s name as mater Gracchorum” [.pdf]
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