Mike Tueller received his bachelor's from Harvard University in 1992 and, after a brief stint in the U.S. Navy, completed Harvard's doctoral program in classical philology in 2003. He taught for five years at Brigham Young University; in 2008 he came to ASU, where he teaches courses in ancient Greek language and literature.
Education
Ph.D. Classical Philology, Harvard University 2003
I work primarily in the Hellenistic period, the time after Alexander the Great but before Augustus, when Greek language and culture spread broadly across the Mediterranean. At that time, the Greek people had to deal with their own discontinuity in space and time from their heritage, and with their constant contact with very different peoples. In response, their literature became erudite, allusive, and, strangely, both nostalgic and cosmopolitan (sometimes at once).
My usual focus within this period is epigram. Epigrams began as inscriptions on objects--usually gravestones or objects dedicated in temples--but soon became short poems that often featured witty turns of phrase or thought (hence the modern meaning of the term "epigram"). My research focuses on the ways that early Hellenistic epigrams played with the conceit of inscription, even when they were never meant to be inscribed.
I am currently at work on a revision of the Greek Anthology (our primary source for Hellenistic epigram) for the Loeb Classical Library.
Publications
Phanocles. In Hellenistic Greek Poetry: A Selection (David Sider, ed.), 462–471. University of Michigan Press, 2017.
Notes on the Greek Anthology, books 1–5. Classical Quarterly 66.2 (2016): 742–751.
Words for Dying in Sepulchral Epigram. In Dialect, Diction and Style in Greek Literary and Inscribed Epigram (Evina Sistakou and Antonios Rengakos, edd.), 215–233. Walter de Gruyter, 2016.
(with W. R. Paton) The Greek Anthology, vol. 1: books 1–5. (Loeb Classical Library) Harvard University Press, 2014.
The Passerby in Archaic and Classical Epigram. In Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram (Manuel Baumbach, Andrej Petrovic, and Ivana Petrovic, edd.), 42–60. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Palinurus and Polydorus: Two Epigrammatic Passages in Vergil’s Aeneid. Latomus 69.2 (2010): 344–358.
Look Who’s Talking: Voice and Identity in Hellenistic Epigram. (Hellenistica Groningana) Peeters. 2008.
An allusive reading of the Orpheus episode in Hermesianax fr. 7. Classical Bulletin 83.1 (2007): 93–108.
