Dr. David Rohrbacher

Professor of Classics

Classics | Humanities | Literature | Medieval & Renaissance Studies

Education

M.A., Ph.D., University of Washington
B.A., Tufts University

Professor Rohrbacher teaches Latin at all levels and Classical Civilization in all periods. He is also active in the concentrations in Literature, Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He is a recipient of an Excellence in Teaching Award from the Society for Classical Studies, the premier organization for the study of Classics in North America.

His scholarly interests include Roman imperial literature, Roman history and historiography, and Late Antiquity. He is the author of The Play of Allusion in the Historia Augusta (University of Wisconsin, 2016), The Historians of Late Antiquity (Routledge, 2002), the revised edition of the Loeb Historia Augusta (Harvard University Press, 2022), and articles and reviews on Roman imperial history and literature.

Recent Courses

Literature of the Roman Empire
Elementary Latin II
Advanced Latin: Catullus, Poems

Selected Publications

Books

The Historians of Late Antiquity (Routledge, 2002).

The Play of Allusion in the Historia Augusta (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016; paperback, 2019)

Revised edition, translation, annotation of the Loeb Historia Augusta (3 vols.; Harvard University Press, 2022)

Articles and Book Chapters

“Why Didn’t Constantius II Eat Fruit?” Classical Quarterly 55.1 (2005): 323-26.

“Iudaei Fetentes at Amm. Marc. 22.5.5,” Mnemosyne 58.3 (2005): 441-42.

“Ammianus Marcellinus and Valerius Maximus,” Ancient History Bulletin 19.1-2 (2005): 20-30.

“The Sources of the Lost Books of Ammianus Marcellinus,” Historia 55.1 (2006): 106-24.

“Jerome, an Early Reader of Ammianus Marcellinus,” Latomus 65.2 (2006): 422-24.

 “Ammianus’ Roman Digressions and the Audience of the Res Gestae,” in John Marincola, ed., Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (Blackwell 2008), vol. 2, 468-73.

“Enmann’s Kaisergeschichte from Augustus to Domitian,” Latomus 68.3 (2009): 709-19.

“Physiognomics in Imperial Latin Biography,” Classical Antiquity 29.1 (2010): 92-116.

“The Sources of the Historia Augusta Re-examined,” Histos 7 (2013): 146-80.

“Reading Ethnic Identity in the Historia Augusta,” Proceedings of the Langford Latin Seminar 17 (2018): 53-67.

“Martial and the Historia Augusta,” Classical Quarterly 70 (2021): 911-16.

Other Publications

“A Sexual Encounter, Narrated through Entries in the Index of Herbert Weir Smyth, (Ancient) Greek Grammar (1920),” Eidolon: A modern way to write about the ancient world, 17 February 2017.

Reviews

Bowersock, Brown, and Grabar, Interpreting Late Antiquity (Harvard 2001), Electronic Antiquity 7.1 (2003).

Gavin Kelly, Ammianus Marcellinus: The Allusive Historian (Cambridge 2008), New England Classical Journal 36.2 (2009): 141-43.

Jan den Boeft et al., A Historical and Philological Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus Book XXVI (Brill 2008), Mnemosyne 62 (2009): 689-92.

Lavinia Galli Milić and Nicole Hecquet-Noti, eds., Historiae Augustae: colloquium Genevense in honorem F. Paschoud septuagenarii. Les traditions historiographiques de l’Antiquité tardive: idéologie, propagande, fiction, réalité (Edipuglia 2010), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2011.04.41.

François Paschoud, ed., Histoire Auguste. Tome IV, 3e partie: Vies des Trente Tyrans et de Claude (Les Belles Lettres 2011), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2012.07.24.

Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford 2012), Classical Journal 108.4 (2013): 476-8.

Mark Thomson, Studies in the Historia Augusta (Latomus 2012), Classical Review 64.1 (2014): 157-9.

Eliodoro Savino, Ricerche sull’Historia Augusta (Naus Editoria 2017), Histos 13 (2019): lxiv-lxxx.