Tim Whitmarsh wins prestigious Classics award

Professor Tim Whitmarsh, Fellow of St John’s, has been awarded the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit by the Society for Classical Studies.

Professor Whitmarsh is the A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture in the University’s Department of Classics as well as a supervisor in Classics at St John’s College. He won the award for his recent book Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism, published by the University of California Press.

The book examines Greek literary culture in the aftermath of the “high” classical period of Sophocles, Plato and Demosthenes, a period known as the “Second Sophistic”. Since the 19^th century, most have seen this era as dominated by a “defensive Hellenism”, an obsession with preserving the glories of the Greek past against the dominance of Rome.

Professor Whitmarsh, however, argues for a dynamic and diverse culture developing during the Second Sophistic and beyond, which cannot be reduced to a simple model of Classical Greek continuity. Covering popular fiction, poetry and a wealth of Greco-Jewish material, the book sheds light on a series of texts that are often left out of the traditional accounts of Greek literature. Beyond the Second Sophistic offers a new way of looking at Greek literature from 300 BC onwards, and challenges the scholarly consensus about Greek and Roman heritage and culture.

The Society for Classical Studies is the USA’s national organisation for academic research in Classics. It award the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit each year for “outstanding contributions to Classical scholarship”. The award will be formally presented to Professor Whitmarsh on 10 January 2015, in a ceremony held in New Orleans.