Francesco Strocchi

Francesco studied Classics at the Catholic University of Milan, where he obtained a BA and MA in Roman History and Historiography. In his dissertation, he investigated the Pseudo-Caesar's Bellum Hispaniense, its sources and the anonymous author. After a detour into the world of human resources, in 2014 he gratefully returned to academia to undertake a PhD in Roman History at UCL. He is particularly interested in Caesarian Studies, the Late Roman Republic and the Principate, the reception and survival of ancient sources, and Roman audience.

Francesco's research analyses the so-called Corpus Caesarianum as a whole, through a comprehensive and integrated approach that regards it as a unique political and editorial case. Whilst scholarship on Caesar's Bellum Gallicium and Bellum Civile is notoriously vast, the three anonymous Commentarii of the Corpus Caesarianum have not been the object of extensive study. Moreover, a detailed survey of the whole Corpus's structural consistency and the officers involved in its completion has never been attempted. Francesco's research fills this gap and offers an alternative interpretation of the issues of authorship and anonymity surrounding the Corpus Caesarianum.

PhD

Supervisor: Valentina Arena (primary) and Benet Salway (secondary)
Working title: 'Author and authorship: Caesar and his editors'
Expected completion date: 2018

Publications

• L'autore del Bellum Hispaniense (The author of the Bellum Hispaniense, a hypothesis), in Rendiconti IL 130 (1996), 99-112, quoted in G. Zecchini, Storia dell Storiografia Antica (Bari, 2016).

Conference papers and presentations

• 'Caesar's Commentarii: Sulla as counter-model', Annual Meeting for Postgraduates in Ancient History (AMPAH) 2016, Newcastle University, March 2016
• 'The five Commentarii of the Corpus Caesarianum, the first editorial case of the Roman world?', Department of Anthropology of Classical Studies and the Archaeological Institute of America joint conference, University of Akron, May 2016
• 'War reports and Caesar's Commentarii: a medium inside a medium', Postgraduate Work in Progress Seminar, Institute of Classical Studies, London, November 2016
• Caesar's Commentarii: anonymity and propaganda', 'Auctor est aequivocum': Authenticity, Authority and Authorship from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Prolepsis' 2nd International Postgraduate Conference, University of Bari, October 2017