Ariadne Pagoni

I read Classics at New College where I remained for my MSt and DPhil. My Master’s research was funded by the Faculty of Classics through a Derby Scholarship and my DPhil was funded by All Souls College and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. In the final year of my DPhil I held a visiting fellowship at the Humboldt University of Berlin for a term. During my doctorate, I was the Retained Lecturer in Ancient Greek at Exeter College for three years until my Junior Research Fellowship here at LMH began in September 2025.

My research focuses on the literature and culture of the Hellenistic period (c. 330–30 BC) and epigraphy. 

My first book project, ‘Athens and Hellenistic Literature’, examines the ways Athens is interpreted and depicted in Hellenistic literature in the context of the geo-political and cultural changes in the Greek world. Alexander the Great’s conquests expanded and changed the Greek world with profound consequences for the next three centuries. How did writers engage with the city of Athens in the new, cosmopolitan Hellenistic world? In light of the city’s importance in the fifth and fourth centuries as a political actor and cultural hub, the book looks at Hellenistic constructions of Athens’ space, history, and literature to understand Hellenistic Greek relationships with the cultural past and present. 

My next project, provisionally titled ‘The Topography of New Comedy’, will look more closely at the evidence of New Comedy, a quintessential genre of the Hellenistic period. It will explore the spatial developments in the genre and what they can tell us about the ways Hellenistic Greeks conceived of different places and environments.

I enjoy incorporating all types of texts in my work and in particular inscriptions. I have written about two inscribed decrees by artists’ associations in Syracuse and I am currently working on a piece about time in the Parian Marble. 

I teach a range of Greek literature and history papers. 

(2023), ‘The association of artists of Aphrodite Hilara: two decrees as evidence for an association of mime-artists in Syracuse’, ZPE 228: 171–80. 

(forthcoming), ‘Attitudes to the law in Menander: parochial panhellenism and radical conservatism’, CQ.

(forthcoming), ‘Hellenistic oratory: theory and practice’, in W. Allan and C. Plastow (eds.), Handbook of Theory and Practice in Greek Oratory, Cambridge.