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Dr Sara De Martin

Early Career Research Associate

October 2023 - September 2024

Non-stipendiary Research Fellow

October 2024 - September 2026

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I specialise in Greek literature, with a focus on archaic elegy and its ancient reception, Greek comedy, and wisdom texts.

For my PhD (KCL, 2021), I worked on the elegies ascribed to the Greek poet Theognis (6th c. BCE): many of these consist of general statements on morals, thus maxims extracted from them are widely quoted in later texts, from the 5th c. BCE onwards. In the thesis (which I am preparing for publication as a monograph) I have problematised the sententious style of Theognis’ elegies, comparing them to Hesiod’s Works and Days, and I have studied how they are reused in literary sources in classical, Hellenistic and imperial times. I have shown that the reception of the Theognidea was bound up with issues of elitism and exclusion, throughout antiquity.

Another major research interest of mine is Greek comedy: I am currently finalising a textual, linguistic, stylistic and thematic commentary on the fragments of eight middle-comedy poets.

For my post-doctoral research, I will expand my work on moral texts in imperial times: focusing on maxims and chreiai, especially those ascribed to women, I will interrogate the appropriation of women’s voices with regard to morals in the Empire.