Dr Henriette van der Blom MA (Copenhagen), M.St. (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)

Research Fellow, Wolfson College

Wolfson College
Oxford,
OX2 6UD

henriette.vanderblom@classics.ox.ac.uk

Profile

I specialise in the political life and oratorical culture of the Roman republic and early Empire. My recent book on Cicero’s Role Models explores Cicero’s rhetorical and political strategy as a newcomer in Roman republican politics. It argues that Cicero advertised himself as follower of chosen models of behaviour from the past – his role models or exempla – in order to promote his public persona and political influence. My current research focuses on the relationship between oratory and political career in the Roman republic, and it investigates (e.g. through close study of speech fragments) how far the oratorical profile and performances of politicians such as Pompey, Caesar, Cato the Younger and others define and restrict their political actions and agendas, and, ultimately, their political influence and careers. I am also one of the editors of the Fragments of the Roman Orators project (with Prof. Christopher Smith and Prof. Catherine Steel) to provide a new edition with commentary and translation of the fragments of the Roman orators of Republican Rome,which will enable further research into the oratorical, legal and political culture at Rome. I am a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, but I also teach papers on the history of the Roman Republic and early Empire and specialist papers on Cicero.

Research Interests

Roman history; Roman republican politics; patterns of political careers; all aspects of Cicero; oratory and rhetoric; fragmentary evidence; exempla and memorialisation

Selected Recent Publications

2010: Cicero’s Role Models. The Political Strategy of Newcomer, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
2011: ‘Pompey in the Contio’, Classical Quarterly, 61.2, 553-73.
2011: ‘Historical exempla as tools of praise and blame in Ciceronian oratory’, in C.J. Smith & R. Corvino (eds), Praise and Blame in Roman Oratory, Classical Press of Wales, Swansea, 49-68.
2012: ‘Cato and the People’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 55.2.
2013: Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome, ed. C. Steel & H. van der Blom,, Oxford University Press.

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