Dr Timothy Smith

smith timothy
Departmental Lecturer in Roman History
timothy.smith@classics.ox.ac.uk

Qualifications: MA MA VUW DPhil Oxon

ORCID: 0000-0003-2684-2030 

Link to college page: 

 

Subject Areas:
College:
Faculty association:
People type:
Academic Background

I am a Roman historian specializing in the social and political history of the republic and early empire. I am from Aotearoa–New Zealand. I have a Master of Arts in Classics and another in Literary Translation Studies, both from Victoria University of Wellington. I moved to Oxford to write my DPhil thesis, which looked at the Roman aedileship. 

Research Interests

My research focuses on popular participation in politics in the Roman world. I am particularly interested in how the built environment of ancient cities reflects how people interacted with political elites and engaged with political institutions. I am currently working on making a book out of my doctoral thesis, which reconstructed a social history of the Roman aedileship. I also have a few side projects on literary translation: I have published on Dante and Seamus Heaney’s reception of Italian poetry, and I am working on translating an extensive collection of selected poems by the Italian poet Claudio Pasi.

Research Keywords

Roman Republic, Roman Empire, Roman Historiography, Elections

Teaching

I teach all topics on Roman history and on Cicero.

Publications

Full Publications: Dr Timothy Smith 2024

Selected Publications:

Smith, T. (forthcoming) ‘Performing the Censorship in the Early Principate’, in A. Antoniou, T. Smith, and K. Webb (eds) The Roman Censorship: Perceptions and Realities (De Gruyter).

Smith, T. (forthcoming, 2025) ‘Reluctant Candidates and Spontaneous Elections in Republican Rome’, Classical Antiquity 44.2.

Smith, T. (forthcoming, 2024) ‘Sulla and Electoral Authoritarianism’, Phoenix 78.3–4.

Smith, T. (2024) ‘Authoritarian elections in imperial Rome’, Omnibus 88, 1–3.

Smith, T. (2024) ‘Where’s Vestorius? Locating Rome’s Aediles’, in A. López García (ed.) Running the Empire: The Places of Roman Governance (London), 99–119.

Smith, T. (2023) ‘State Terrorism in the Late Roman Republic’, in G. Wrightson (ed.) Terrorism through the Ages (Leiden and Boston), 72–83.

Smith, T. (2021) ‘Elections in the Time of Cinna’, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 70.1, 29–54.