John T. Ramsey
AB (Harvard), BA, MA (Oxford), PhD (Harvard) 
Emeritus Professor of Classics
Download Professor Ramsey's CV in PDF format

Office : 1812 University Hall
E-mail: jtramsey@uic.edu
Telephone: (312) 996-5530

Areas of Research and Publication:
Roman Republican prose authors (Cicero and Sallust) and Roman history and law; ancient comets as reported in the Greco-Roman tradition and in classical Chinese sources.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Books:

– Cicero, Philippics I & II, Latin text, edited with introduction and commentary. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series (CUP 2003) pp. xxvi/350.
– Sallust's Bellum Catilinae (text with introduction and commentary), 2nd edition (American Philological Association/Oxford University Press, 2006; corrected reprint, Feb. 2009) pp. xx/252.

Monograph:

- A Descriptive Catalogue of Greco-Roman Comets from 500 B.C. to A.D. 400. Special issue of the journal Syllecta Classica, vol. 17 (2006: published March 2007; corrected reprint, Apr. 2008), 242 pp .

Loeb Library Edition

–  Cicero’s Philippics, translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey (1986), revised in collaboration with Gesine Manuwald, vol. 1 (pp. lxxii + 321), vol. 2 (pp. x + 365): Harvard Univ. Pr., 2009.
                        ISBN: 978-0-674-99634-2/. . . .99635-9.


Articles:

– “Mark Antony’s Judiciary Reform and its Revival under the Triumvirs,” Journal of Roman Studies 95 (2005) 20-37.
– “A Catalogue of Greco-Roman Comets from 500 B.C. to A.D. 400,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 28 (2007), 175-97.


Chapters in Books:

– “Senatorial Rhetoric,” chapt. 10 in A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, ed. W. J. Dominik and J. C. R. Hall (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 122-35.
- “At What Hour did the Murderers of Julius Caesar Gather on the Ides of March 44 B.C.?” in In Pursuit of Wissenschaft: Festschrift für William M. Calder III zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. Stephan Heilen et al. (Olms, 2008), 351-63.  -- Download "Supplementary Tables" in PDF format
– “Caesar as Proconsul: Politics at a Distance”, chapt. 4 in A Companion to Julius Caesar, ed. Miriam Griffin (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), 37-56.                  – “Debate at a Distance:  A Unique Rhetorical Strategy in Cicero’s Thirteenth Philippic” in Form and Function in Roman Oratory, ed. D. H. Berry and Andrew Erskine (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 155-74.

Reviews:

– Nino Marinone, Cronologia Ciceroniana. 2nd ed. rev. by Ermanno Malpaspina (Rome 2004).  reviewed in Classical Philology 101 (2006) 424-29.
- Asconius:  Commentaries on Speeches by Cicero, translated with introduction and commentary by R. G. Lewis, Clarendon Ancient History Series (Oxford, 2006).  reviewed in  Classical Review 58 (2008), 456-58.
- The invectives of Sallust and Cicero : critical edition with introduction, translation, and commentary, Anna A. Novokhatko.  Berlin : Walter de Gruyter, 2009.  reviewed in  Journal of Roman Studies 100 (2010), 40-41.
- Cicero’s Philippics. History, Rhetoric and Ideology. ed. T. Stevenson and M. Wilson (Prudentia 37 and 38.). Auckland: Polygraphia Ltd, 2008.  reviewed in Classical Review 61.1 (2010), 109-12.

Biographical Memoir:

of D(avid) R(oy) Shackleton Bailey (10 Dec. 1917-28 Nov. 2005), Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature (Harvard), Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 152.2 (2008) 268-78.

Work in Press:
– articles for Virgil Encyclopedia (Wiley-Blackwell), ed. Richard Thomas and Jan Ziolkowski
         “Astronomy”   (983 words).
“Comet”   (504 words).
“Oratory”   (596 words).

– articles for Encyclopedia of Ancient History (Wiley-Blackwell), ed. Roger Bagnall, Andrew Erskine, et al.
                  Marcus Antonius (RE 30)—Mark Antony—(1,470 words).
                  Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (RE 118)—(962 words).

“A Tribute to the Memory of Brian G. Marsden,” International Comet Quarterly 1911 (2,000 words).

Work in Progress:
– “The Jewish Revolt of Bar Kokhba (AD 132-135) and the Star of Antinous”
– Commentary on Cicero’s Philippics 10-14
– new Loeb edition of Sallust, including all fragments of the Historiae  (to be completed 1 September 2012)

Courses recently taught:
- Classics 250 “Greek and Latin Epic Poetry" (in English translation)
- Latin 299 "Sallust's Bellum Catilinae"
- Classics 298 "The Rise to Power of Julius Caesar, General & Politician”
- Latin 103 “Intermediate Latin I:  Apuleius’ Cupid & Psyche and Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis”
- Latin 299 “Latin Epistles:  Pliny, Seneca, and Cicero” (in Latin)
– Latin 104 “Intermediate Latin II:  Ovid, selections from Metamorphoses”
– Latin 299 “Virgil’s Aeneid, books 2 and 6”
– Latin 299 “Cicero’s Second Philippic”
– Latin 299 “Catullus: selections”

Books

 

Sallust's Bellum Catilinae

Second Edition
Edited by J. T. Ramsey
ISBN13: 978-0-19-532085-5

Book Description

In his Bellum Catilinae , C. Sallustius Crispus or Sallust (86-35/34 B.C.) recounts the dramatic events of 63 B.C., when a disgruntled and impoverished nobleman, L. Sergius Catilina, turned to armed revolution after two electoral defeats. Among his followers were a group of heavily indebted young aristocrats, the Roman poor, and a military force in the north of Italy. With his trademark archaizing style, Sallust skillfully captures the drama of the times, including an early morning attempt to assassinate the consul Cicero and two emotionally charged speeches, by Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger, in a senatorial debate over the fate of the arrested conspirators. Sallust wrote while the Roman Republic was being transformed into an empire during the turbulent first century B.C.
The Bellum Catilinae is well-suited for second-year or advanced Latin study and provides a fitting introduction to the richness of Latin literature, while also pointing the way to a critical investigation of late-Republican government and historiography. Ramsey's introduction and commentary bring the text to life for Latin students. This new edition includes two maps and two city plans, an updated and now annotated bibliography, a list of divergences from the 1991 Oxford Classical Text of Sallust, and revisions in the introduction and commentary.

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Volume XVII (2006)
A Descriptive Catalogue of Greco-Roman Comets
from 500 B.C. to A.D. 400

John Ramsey

This special edition of Syllecta Classica is devoted entirely to the above work. Included is a tabular summary of comets and other celestial objects attested in Greco-Roman sources, a comprehensive collection of texts referring to these objects, and discussion of the texts.

Reprinted with corrections, 2008.

 

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