- New Zealand
- Classics, Philosophy, Roman History, Ancient Greek History, Ancient Greek and Roman Art, Aesthetics, and 13 moreAncient Greek Drama, Ancient Greek Language, Ancient Greek Literature, Greek Lyric Poetry, Greek Satyr Play, Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics, Art History, Intellectual History, Greek Epic, Ancient Greek Religion, Ancient Greek and Roman Theatre, Literary Criticism, and Satyr Playedit
- Patrick O'Sullivan completed his BA Hons. and MA at Melbourne University and his PhD at Cambridge; at both instituti... morePatrick O'Sullivan completed his BA Hons. and MA at Melbourne University and his PhD at Cambridge; at both institutions he taught Latin, Greek, Classical Greek Civilisation and Greek and Roman Mythology. He is Associate Professor in Classics at the University of Canterbury, and since 1999 has taught across a broad range of subjects including Greek and Latin language and literature at all levels and also Greek art, mythology, philosophy and cultural history. His research interests primarily include Greek language, literature, theatre, intellectual history, and ancient aesthetics. In 2008 he was involved as translator and actor in a full production of Euripides'Cyclops, produced in Christchurch, NZ; and in 2013 he published a book, co-authored with Chris Collard, on Euripides' Cyclops and major fragments of Greek satyric drama. This included - for the first time in one volume - texts, translations, commentaries and substantial introduction dealing with all the significant remains combined with our one complete surviving play of this important dramatic genre.
Grants & Awards
2023: (i) Canterbury Fellowship at the University of Oxford.
(ii) Visiting Fellowship at University College, Oxford.
2019-20: (i) Canterbury Fellowship at the University of Oxford.
(ii) Visiting Fellowship at University College, Oxford.
2015-16: (i) Canterbury Fellowship at the University of Cambridge
(ii) Rutherford Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge.
2009-10: Contestable Research Funding Award (c. $2,000) from School of Humanities, University of Canterbury.
2008: (c. $10,000) Research Grant from College of Arts, UC for production of Euripides' Cyclops.
2006 & 2007: Voted Top Lecturer in the College of Arts in the annual UCSA Lecturer of the Year Awards.
2003-5: $100,000 Research Award from Marsden Fund Council through the Royal Society of New Zealand.
2003: Visiting Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Undergraduate Courses
In addition to teaching Greek and Latin, he takes the following courses:
CLAS 104: Greek Mythologies.
CLAS 141: Classical Concepts of Beauty.
CLAS 206/336: Art and Ideas in Archaic and Classical Greece: A course on Greek art in its social, political and intellectual context from c. 750-320 BC.
CLAS 219/319: Sport and Leisure in the Ancient World.
CLAS 224/324: Greek Philosophy: including lectures on the Sophists, Plato and Aristotle.
Graduate Courses
CLAS 409/415: Fourth-year Honours Greek Language and Literature course on Helen of Troy in texts including Homer, Drama (esp. Euripides), and the first Sophistic (Gorgias and Isocrates).
CLAS 402/403: Unprepared Translation from Greek and Latin.
CLAS 404: Greek Literary Subjects, including: Homer, Iliad 1 & 9, Sophocles' Ajax, Pindaric Odes, Euripides' Cyclops, and Plato Republic 10.
CLAS 416: Prescribed Texts: Latin, including Ovid, Metamorphoses, Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars. Catullus 64, Cicero Verrines.
CLAS 326/405: Concepts of Art & Literature from Homer to Aristotle.
CLAS 460: Approaches to Classical Studies: Concepts of Cultural Identity in the Greco-Roman World.
EURO 401: The Idea of Europe.edit
For the first time one volume provides the reader with scholarly examination of the genre of satyr drama by experts in multiple fields: philology, textual criticism, literary interpretation, ancient reception, and archaeology. Sections... more
For the first time one volume provides the reader with scholarly examination of the genre of satyr drama by experts in multiple fields: philology, textual criticism, literary interpretation, ancient reception, and archaeology. Sections are devoted to the three most prolific writers of satyr drama, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; in addition, new trends in the genre are explored through late Classical and Hellenistic writers.
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Overall volume co-authored with C. Collard
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Responses to death, that most universal of all human experiences, comprise some of the richest, most enduring and varied aspects of ancient Greek myth, art, literature and ideas. From the vastly influential epics of Homer, to the... more
Responses to death, that most universal of all human experiences, comprise some of the richest, most enduring and varied aspects of ancient Greek myth, art, literature and ideas. From the vastly influential epics of Homer, to the philosophies of Plato and others, to funerary monuments and remains found in tombs, we encounter a diversity of attitudes to death as well as differing notions of what happens to us after we die. This in some ways reflects the fact that for the Greeks of the pre-Christian era, there was no canonical religious text accepted as providing a universal dogma for the faithful to uphold. Their thinking about death can be considered an open system, just as religion in Greece can be understood as a diverse phenomenon embracing a wide range of cult practices and concepts of the divine. But, just as Greek religion had clearly recognisable and consistent elements, such as the overriding importance of the twelve Olympian gods, so, too, in Greek eschatology, prevalent themes emerge that enable us to speak of its major attributes.
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Pindar's celebration of victory often focuses on ἀρετή, a multi-faceted word attested in Homer with connotations of martial valour or athletic "excellence". While Plato, Aristotle and others aligned it more fully with personal, ethical... more
Pindar's celebration of victory often focuses on ἀρετή, a multi-faceted word attested in Homer with connotations of martial valour or athletic "excellence". While Plato, Aristotle and others aligned it more fully with personal, ethical virtue, ἀρετή continued to convey nuances of public success and athletic prowess into the Roman period, as evidenced by inscriptions (IvO 225, etc.) and sources such as Lucian (Anach. 13-14, 36), Philostratus (Gym. 45) and Galen (5.906.15 Kühn), among others. In Pindar ἀρετή retains these agonistic, heroic features, while also embracing more ethical and intellectual elements, all of which the poet considers he shares with his patrons. It becomes a goal for the poet and patron alike, and a source of κλέος for both; ἀρετή has implications for the poet's construction of his own role and identity, which he makes a lynch-pin between his patrons and himself.
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Co-authored with M. Helzle
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Co-authored with N. O'Sullivan
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This paper focuses on aspects of the reception of Aeschylus both in antiquity and in the twentieth century. A key theme to emerge is that, for the ancients, Aeschylus is celebrated and parodied as a poet whose works are stylistically... more
This paper focuses on aspects of the reception of Aeschylus both in antiquity and in the twentieth century. A key theme to emerge is that, for the ancients, Aeschylus is celebrated and parodied as a poet whose works are stylistically grand, ‘heavy’ and ‘stun’ the audience out of their senses. It also argues that Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes plays a more significant role in shaping ancient responses to the poet than has been recognised, and that certain passages from the play emerge more clearly in the light of ancient aesthetic theories applied to Aeschylus himself. As for Xenakis, while the composer reduces the Aeschylean trilogy to a series of more or less extended fragments, he focuses on what he considered to be the Oresteia’s most visceral moments to produce a new synthetic whole. The paper suggests that Xenakis’ Oresteia, for all its modernism, is nevertheless richly informed by ancient views of the poet, and thus perpetuates an image of the dramatist consistent with his reputation in antiquity.
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The story of Danae and her son Perseus on Seriphos, where they are initially rescued by Dictys only to be his molested by his brother Polydectes, appeared in Greek lyric, tragedy, and comedy. Aeschylus' satyric handling of the story has... more
The story of Danae and her son Perseus on Seriphos, where they are initially rescued by Dictys only to be his molested by his brother Polydectes, appeared in Greek lyric, tragedy, and comedy. Aeschylus' satyric handling of the story has been read as a light-hearted, romantic romp with Silenos and the chorus acting as benign foster-parents to the infant hero. But Aeschylus gives Silenos and the chorus of satyrs a more menacing identity than they generally had in other plays of this genre. Silenos can be seen as the comical counterpart of Polydectes, and appears to have the full support of his sons, something he clearly does not enjoy in other satyric dramas. The satyrs of the chorus stand in contrast to the often more sympathetic, if clownish, creatures they can be elsewhere. Dictyulci contains elements typical of satyr drama, but in paradoxical ways not without moments of pathos.
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Co-authored with J. Maitland