Marcie Persyn

My research interests center upon the interplay between Hellenistic and Augustan poetry; I am intrigued by the questions of how Roman poets read, reflected, and responded to the literary tradition and linguistic heritage of Greece. While this sort of cultural exchange can be found throughout Greco-Roman history and texts, my inquiries have focused especially on the time period that post-dates the Roman conquest of Greece, beginning in the second half of the second century B.C.E. and continuing through the early years of the Empire. When it comes to matters of Greco-Roman exchange, Roman Satire is a particularly productive locus of study: it is a place where Roman authors created a unique and ultimately very new mode of poetry, but all while cleverly building upon and re-purposing pieces of the Greek language and literary tradition.

My doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania investigated just such a subject: by utilizing modern code-switching theory, I analyzed the literary, cultural, and generic consequences of the Greek terms and quotations found within the fragments of the first Roman satirist, Lucilius. In my future endeavors, I intend to explore these lines of research still further, examining how sociolinguistic frameworks may be useful for disentangling the linguistic, poetic, and cultural exchange latent in Latin literature. I am simultaneously broadening my work on Lucilius in order to delve into questions of textual transmission and the potentialities of presenting satirical fragments within digital editions.