Professor Malcolm Davies

I am an Emeritus Research Fellow in Classics at St John's College.

I have a wide range of research interests within Ancient Greek literature which are reflected by my publications.

I am particularly interested in Homer and early epic poetry: Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Göttingen, 1988) and The Greek Epic Cycle (Bloomsbury, 1989); in Greek lyric poetry: Poetarum Melicorum Fragmenta, Vol I (Oxford, 1991) and Poems of Stesichorus (with Patrick Finglass) published by Cambridge University Press in 2014; and in Greek tragedy: Sophocles Trachiniae (Oxford, 1991).

I have also collaborated with J. Kathirithamby to produce Greek Insects (Duckworth, 1986), and I'm interested in the influence of Greek tragedy upon such nineteenth- and twentieth-century opera composers as Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.

Published papers include The three Electras: Sophocles, Hofmannsthal, Strauss and the tragic vision (Antike und Abendland, vol. 45, no. 1, 1999, pp. 36-65), Achaeus' Olympion Symposium in ‘Dancing Wisteria’, 1: 213–23 (M. Kubo Festschrift, 2020), and Portraying Political Theatre: parody and caricature ancient and modern (Classical Reception Journal 2024).

The third of the series of Epic commentaries, Cypria, was published by Harvard University Press in July 2019 and Commentary on the Lesser and Anonymous Greek Lyric Fragments was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press.

My most recent book, The Hero’s Life Choice, Studies on Hercules at the Crossroads, the Judgment of Paris and their Reception was published by Brill in 2023.

The last of my Epic Cycle commentaries on the Little Iliad, the Sack of Troy, the Return of the Heroes and Telegony will be published in 2026, by Harvard University Press.

I am at present working on publishing my collected writings on folktale, 2 vols. The first to be published by Mohr Sieback in Tubingen in 2027.