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College of Humanities People

Roderick Saxey

Department of Greek and Latin: http://greekandlatin.osu.edu/



Education:
BA in Ancient Greek (Brigham Young Univ.), MA in Shakespeare Studies (Shakespeare Institute, Stratford), Post-Bacc. in Classics (Penn), MPhil in Byzantine Studies (Oxford). My MA dissertation was "Greek Drama in Tudor England" and my MPhil thesis was "Introduction & Commentary to the Antehomeric Proëm of John Tzetzes' Allegoriæ Iliadis". This photo is me in front of the Colosseum, in the Old Rome (the one on the Tiber).

General Background:
Save for our own mother tongue, I can scarce think of a worthier subject of study than the East Roman Empire ("Byzantium"): it's mediæval, but it's also Greek. It's Greek, yet equally Roman. It's history and literature; oratory and myth; Christian and Hellenic. The wellspring of the Italian—and hence the English—Renaissance, Constantinople was the greatest seat of scholarship since Alexandria, and without Byzantium Classics would not exist. Yet Byzantium not only conveyed Classics but shaped it. And, far from being mere imitators, the Greek-speaking East Romans had an active, thoughtful and centuries-long interaction with the texts they handed down to us (as well as other texts later destroyed by invaders from east and west). In other words, they were far more than our deliverymen! Linguistically, Byzantium's a feast, right in the middle of an unbroken (though by no means unchanging) line that stretches over thirty-five hundred years, from before the tablets of Pylus and Cnossus to after the verses of Cavafy, Seferis and Elytis. · · · Besides Greek, Latin is a joy both to read and to teach. I've been very gratified by seeing my students succeed here at OSU, where I've also learned from one of my own teachers that a well-balanced Ciceronian period is an easy match against verse from any of the poets, save only Ovid. · · · And beyond that? There's Icelandic (the most beautiful language), Gothic (the most surprising), Anglo-Saxon (so wonderfully ours), German (so fun to speak, even poorly), Dutch (so heavy in my mouth but so lovely in my wife's), and Hebrew (with its unusual grace and unexpected variety: "other [languages] cloy / the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry / where most she satisfies"). And our own greats: the English Bible, P.G. Wodehouse, and above all Shakespeare.

Greek (Mycenæan to Today) and Other Languages
Teaching
Manuscripts and Primary Texts
Editing & Translating