Postgraduate Profile

Phoebe Garrett

PhD Candidate, School of Humanities and Social Science

Discipline: Classics
Faculty/Division: Education and Arts
Email: phoebe.garrett@uon.edu.au
Campus: Callaghan

Current Research

PhD Thesis Title: Biographers and Historians on the Family Background of the Twelve Caesars

Supervisors: Hugh Lindsay and Jane Bellemore

Abstract:

My research topic is Family background in the historians and biographers of the Twelve Caesars. This topic takes in the significance of ancestry and character inheritance in the writers of 2nd Century CE Rome, with my case study the accounts of the lives and personalities of the first twelve Caesars, from Julius Caesar, through the Julio-Claudians, down to the last Flavian, Domitian. The main authors I will be consulting are Suetonius, Tacitus, and Plutarch.

I expect to find that an assumption of character inheritance from father to son explains the (sometimes extensive) references to the Caesars' ancestors and provides an extra level of characterisation of the Caesars themselves.

Publications:

My presentation at ASCS 31 (2010) can be found published in the Proceedings at http://msc.uwa.edu.au/classics/ascs31/Garrett.pdf

I edited the NewMac 2010 Proceedings, the Humanity Journal, which can be found at http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/hss/research/publications/humanity/2010-humanity-journal.html

I presented the paper 'What's the Use of Family Trees?' at ASCS 32 (2011) in Auckland, New Zealand. The programme can be found at http://www.ascs32.com/default.asp

In 2012 I will be presenting papers at ASCS 33 (Melbourne), and the Classical Association (UK).