Christopher Mallan
The University of Queensland, Australia, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics (HPRC), Alumnus
University of Oxford, St Benet's Hall / Faculty of Classics, Lecturer in Ancient History, St Benet's Hall
I am an ancient historian who works on Roman Imperial History, Historiography and the reception of the Greco-Roman historiographical tradition in Byzantium. I joined the staff of the University of Western Australia as Senior Lecturer in Ancient History in 2018, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022. Prior to this, I was the college Lecturer in Ancient History at St Benet's Hall (2015-2017) and Lecturer in Roman History at The Queen's College (2017). Between 2015-2016 I also held the post of Titular Lecturer in Classics at Wadham College. Between 2008 and 2012 I was a Tutor in Ancient History at the University of Queensland.
For my doctorate, I worked under the supervision of the then Regius Professor of Greek, Chris Pelling (2012-2015). During the period of my DPhil I was elected Senior Scholar (2012-13) and Keeley Scholar (2013-14, 2014-15) at Wadham College. Before that, I studied at the University of Queensland, where I received my BA with first class honours (2008) and MPhil (2008-2010).
Current Projects:
1) with Eleanor Cowan (University of Sydney) Making Sense of Monarchy
2) with Theofili Kampianaki A Companion to Byzantine Epitomes
Address: University of Western Australia
School of Humanities (M204)
Crawley, Perth
Western Australia, 6009
For my doctorate, I worked under the supervision of the then Regius Professor of Greek, Chris Pelling (2012-2015). During the period of my DPhil I was elected Senior Scholar (2012-13) and Keeley Scholar (2013-14, 2014-15) at Wadham College. Before that, I studied at the University of Queensland, where I received my BA with first class honours (2008) and MPhil (2008-2010).
Current Projects:
1) with Eleanor Cowan (University of Sydney) Making Sense of Monarchy
2) with Theofili Kampianaki A Companion to Byzantine Epitomes
Address: University of Western Australia
School of Humanities (M204)
Crawley, Perth
Western Australia, 6009
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Books by Christopher Mallan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108831000
Number of pages: 348
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Christopher Mallan
X, 610 S. ISBN: 978-3-903207-38-7; ISSN: 1992-514X
Keywords: Historia Augusta, Panegyrici Latini, forgery, quattrocento
At some point before the fifth century, an unknown author affixed to each book of Dio's Roman History an index comprising a summary of its contents and an excerpt of the consular fasti. This article presents the first detailed examination of these unique paratexts and an investigation into their origins.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108831000
Number of pages: 348
X, 610 S. ISBN: 978-3-903207-38-7; ISSN: 1992-514X
Keywords: Historia Augusta, Panegyrici Latini, forgery, quattrocento
At some point before the fifth century, an unknown author affixed to each book of Dio's Roman History an index comprising a summary of its contents and an excerpt of the consular fasti. This article presents the first detailed examination of these unique paratexts and an investigation into their origins.
The oration commonly known as the Εἰς Βασιλέα ([Aristid.] Or. 35K) is generally regarded as either a genuine work of Aristides and dated to the reign of Antoninus Pius (Jones 1972), or as a work of an unknown orator operating in the reign of Philip the Arab (Groag 1918; Swift 1966; De Blois 1986). However, neither of these positions are entirely compelling, and alternatives remain open. Long ago, Alfred von Domaszewski proposed that the addressee of the speech was in fact Gallienus and that it was delivered in AD 260 (von Domaszweski 1906). Von Domaszewski’s thesis was rejected by Groag and it has subsequently fallen into abeyance. But although the von Domaszewski’s date of 260 remains problematic, our changing knowledge of the history and chronology of the 250s and the 260s, and indeed of the family of Gallienus, means that a Gallienic date for the oration should be reconsidered. This paper proposes to provide such a reassessment. It will be argued that a) the speech contains references and strong allusions to significant political and military events which fit the period of Gallienus’ sole rule, and b) the speech may be thus best understood as a product of an orator responding to the political context of Achaea in the early 260s.
This paper presents an examination of cross-cultural dynamics and interactions within Xiphilinus’ Epitome of Dio’s Roman History. The task of excerpting (and reworking) Dio’s voluminous Roman History, was great. It was an endeavour that required Xiphilinus to interact with his source material in such a way as to make it relevant to ‘the way of life and political situation’ of his eleventh-century audience. On the face of it, Xiphilinus’ task was considerable – his endeavour required him to interact not only with Dio’s text, but also with the world in which Dio lived. There was, however, a common thread that connected Dio to Xiphilinus. That thread was the shared cultural heritage: specifically, a belief in paideia, and the veneration of the classics of Greek Literature from Homer to Plato.
A version of this paper was published as "The Style Method and Programme of Xiphilinus' Epitome of Cassius Dio's Roman History" in GRBS (2013).
Speakers
1) Dr Kimberley Czajkowski (University of Edinburgh)
Dr Czajkowski is a Roman Historian based at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh, Dr Czajkowski was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the ‘Religion and Politics’ centre of excellence at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Dr Czajkowski’s work has focused primarily on the practice of law in the Roman provinces of the Near East. Her first monograph, Localised Law: The Babatha and Salome Komaise Archives was published by OUP in 2017.
2) Dr Shino Konishi (University of Western Australia)
Dr Konishi is a Historian at the University of Western Australia and is a member of the School of Indigenous Studies and the School of Humanities. Dr Konishi has written extensively on the histories of cross-cultural encounters in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Australia, the history of European, particularly French, exploration in Australia and the Pacific, European and colonial representations of Aboriginal people and gender relations, Indigenous biography and emotions.
3) A/Prof. Richard Vokes (University of Western Australia)
Dr Richard Vokes is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia, and an elected Research Associate of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford. His research focuses primarily on the African Great Lakes region, especially on the societies of South-western Uganda, where he has been conducting ethnographic fieldwork since 2000. He has published extensively, including on: development (governance, education, and natural resource management), the HIV/AIDS epidemic, new religious movements, the history of photography, and media and social change. His work on natural resources management has focused on legal pluralism
A version of the paper is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Historia (2017).
Historical writing about Rome in both Latin and Greek forms an integrated topic. There are two strands in ancient writing about the Romans and their empire: (a) the Romans’ own tradition of histories of the deeds of the Roman people at home and at war, and (b) Greek historical responses, some developing their own models (Polybius, Josephus) and the others building on what both the Roman historians and earlier Greeks had written (Dionysius, Appian, Cassius Dio). Whereas older scholarship tended to privilege a small group of ‘great historians’ (the likes of Sallust, Livy, Tacitus), recent work has rightly brought out the diversity of the traditions and recognized that even ‘minor’ writers are worth exploring not just as sources, but for their own concerns and reinterpretation of their material (such as The Fragments of the Roman Historians (2013), and the collected volumes on Velleius Paterculus (Cowan 2011) and Appian (Welch 2015)). The study of these historiographical traditions is essential as a counterbalance to the traditional use of ancient authors as a handy resource, with scholars looking at isolated sections of their structure. This fragmentary use of the ancient evidence makes us forget to reflect on their work in its textual and contextual entirety.