Dr Tom Gavin

My doctoral thesis, currently being prepared for submission as a monograph, examined the discourses and realities of inter-polis cooperation during the Roman imperial period. Through a study of Greek orators, inter-polis institutions, and the activities of provincial magnates, I argue that concord took on increasing valence in the inter-city politics of western Asia Minor after Augustus and this had profound implications on how poleis interacted with each other. My wider research interests mostly fall within Roman imperial political, social, and religious history, especially of the eastern Mediterranean; I am particularly interested in the contributions of epigraphy and numismatics to the study of the ancient past.

Roman Asia Minor, Greek and Latin epigraphy, Roman provincial coinage, civic religion, the history of the polis.

I teach the majority of Roman history papers offered at the University of Oxford for Classics, CAAH, and AMH students. These include Roman History 4 (241-146 BC); Roman History 5 (146-46 BC); Roman History 6 (46 BC – AD 54); Politics, Society, and Culture from Nero to Hadrian; Religions in the Greek and Roman World; Tacitus and Tiberius; Augustan Rome; and Greek and Roman Coins.

Full Publications:

Selected Publications:
Gavin, T. 2024. ‘Asclepian social distancing? A reinterpretation of Aelius Aristides, Oration 47.23’, Phoenix 78.2, 153-158.
2024. ‘A Note on SEG 62.978 and the Proconsulship of Rufius Varenus’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 229, 252-254.