Mary Bennett Tutorial Fellow in Classics, St Hilda's College
Associate Professor in Classical Languages and Literature, Faculty of Classics

Dr Rebecca Armstrong teaches a range of papers for the undergraduate courses in Classics, especially in Latin literature and language.

She also supervises graduate students in Latin literature of the late Republic and early Empire.

She currently lectures for the University on Vergil’s Aeneid.

Dr Armstrong’s research interests lie in Latin poetry of the late Republic and early Empire. She has written on subjects including mythical Cretan women seen from a Roman perspective, the love poetry of Ovid, the complications of multiple home ownership in Catullus, and the subtle but pervasive importance of plants in the poetry of Vergil. 

She is currently working with Dr Matthew Robinson on a commentary on Ovid, Metamorphoses 1, as well as continuing her investigations into ecology and ancient literature.

Books:

Ovid and His Love Poetry (Duckworth, London: 2005)

Cretan Women: Pasiphae, Ariadne and Phaedra in Latin Poetry (Oxford University Press: 2006)

Vergil’s Green Thoughts: Plants, Humans, and the Divine (Oxford University Press: 2019)

Articles:

‘Crete in the Aeneid: Recurring Trauma and Alternative Fate', Classical Quarterly 52 (2002) 321-40

‘Retiring Apollo: Ovid on the Politics and Poetics of Self-Sufficiency', Classical Quarterly 54 (2004) 528-50

'The Aeneid: Inheritance and Empire' in M Clarke, B Currie and ROAM Lyne (eds.) Epic Interactions: Perspectives on Homer, Virgil and the Epic Tradition (Oxford University Press: 2006)

‘Vergil's Cucumber: Georgics 4.121-2', Classical Quarterly 58 (2008) 366-8

'Against Nature? Some Augustan Perspectives on Man-Made Marvels' in P Hardie (ed.) Paradox and the Marvellous in Augustan Literature and Culture (Oxford University Press: 2009)

'Journeys and Nostalgia in Catullus', Classical Journal 109.1 (2013) 43 – 71

‘Travelling in Greek and Roman Literature’ (with Dr Katherine Clarke), in M De Pourcq and S Levie (eds.) European Literary History: An Introduction (Routledge: 2018)

'Hercules and the Stone Tree: Aeneid 8.233-40', in Classical Quarterly 72 (2020) 905–08