Career
He is the Floyd A. Cailloux Centennial Professor of Classics and Distinguished University Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published widely on Roman literature, social and cultural history, art, and religion and is a noted expert on Augustan Rome and the role of memory in Rome. Other interests include the reception of classical themes and heroes (esp Herakles) and the influence of Rome on American popular culture.
He has held visiting appointments in the United States., Europe, Argentina, and New Zealand and received numerous grants from the National Endowment of the Humanities, including three summer seminars for college and university faculty at the American Academy in Rome, where he was also a Resident in 1973.
He has been a consultant on academic programs to many institutions, including the South African Ministry of Research after the end of the Apartheid regime. He regularly teaches large introductory courses on ancient Greece and Rome and on Greece and Rome in Film.
In 2011, he received an honorary Doctor of Philology from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
