Posted on Apr 6, 2001

Mark Toher, professor of classics, has received a research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study next year at Oxford University's All Soul's College. Toher, an alumnus of Oxford's University College, is writing a commentary on the life of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, as chronicled by Nicholaus of Damascus. (Nicholaus was probably a personal friend of Augustus, a teacher, statesman and author of one of the most extensive histories of antiquity.) Most of the manuscript has been preserved in a Byzantine encyclopedia from 10th century AD, what Toher describes as a “Reader's Digest” consisting of topics such as vice, virtue and conspiracy. “I will attempt to provide a context for understanding the value of the document,” Toher said. “You can't use this as an historical source unless you know what type of document it was … like the Federalist papers, you need to understand the context and the authors.” Toher will spend the fall at Oxford, and the rest of the academic year at Yale University.