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Dr Nicolò Campodonico

Research Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow

Born on the Italian Riviera, I studied Classics as an undergraduate at the University of Pisa and the Scuola Normale Superiore, where I also earned my PhD in 2025. I have also been a visiting research student at Leipzig, Oxford, and Princeton.

My main research area focuses on the biographical traditions surrounding Latin poets, particularly Virgil. In my doctoral dissertation, Living Virgil. The Biography of a Poet as a Literary Legend, I argue that Virgil’s life, from birth to death, was shaped by readers alongside the reception and exegesis of his works, also following narrative patterns attested for other ancient poets, especially Homer. I am currently revising this work into a monograph, further highlighting how biographical legends contributed to the creation of the myth(s) of Virgil. I have also worked on Latin literary forgeries (or pseudepigrapha)in the Appendix Vergiliana and Corpus Tibullianum, examining their possible origins and the public’s interest in texts deliberately crafted to appear as works of major poets. In addition, I am writing on the elegies by and about Sulpicia, exploring her poetics in contrast with the interventions of the amicus.

Beyond this, I have contributed to a commentary on Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (on the tales of the robbers in Books 4 and 6) and studied the role of the Muses in Lucretius’ poem, also proposing a new reading of its debated ending. My interests also extend to medieval Latin literature, particularly that connected to Genoa. I co-organised a conference on indirect tradition and text quotation (Parma 2023) and am organising a workshop on Virgil’s readers and commentators.

I welcome contact from anyone interested in Virgil and the Virgilian tradition, biographies of ancient poets, pseudepigrapha, Roman women writers, and Latin poetry in general.

Selected Publications

‘Omero e Virgilio. Vite parallele’, in Atti del VII seminario nazionale per dottorandi e dottori di ricerca in studi latini (1° dicembre 2023), La Biblioteca di ClassicoContemporaneo 16 (2025), 1-26.
‘In the name of Tibullus [Tib.]. 3, 19 and Horace’, Giornale Italiano di Filologia 76 (2024), 181-200.
‘Una rilettura della Vita Terentii svetoniana: osservazioni letterarie e filologiche’, Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 22.1 (2024), 43-70.
‘Iulius Montanus’ Coldness. A note on a Literary Judgement in Sen. Ep. 122.11–13’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 167 (2024), 38-49.
Apuleio. Metamorfosi. Volume II: libri IV–VI, comm. by L. Nicolini, C. Lazzarini, N. Campodonico, transl. by L. Graverini, Milano, Fondazione Lorenzo Valla (Mondadori) 2023.
‘Finally Epicurus. A note on Lucr. VI 1250–1251’, Maia 74.3 (2022), 614-620.
‘Before pseudo-Virgil. Pseudepigraphy, Anonymity and Authorship in Catalepton’, Sileno 48 (2022), 23–38.
‘Le epigrafi latine delle porte medievali di Genova: Porta Soprana e Porta dei Vacca’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia 14.1 (2022), 215–256.
‘Doctus Amyclas. I presagi della tempesta in Luc. 5.539‒560 tra epica, poesia didascalica e retorica’, Philologus 166.1 (2022), 85–98.
‘Virgilio nel circolo di Messalla. Ciris, Catalepton 9 e la letteratura di età tiberiana’, Maia 73.3 (2021), 657–670.
‘Le Muse di Lucrezio (e degli altri). Incoronazioni poetiche e memorie esiodee nel de rerum natura’, Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 85 (2020), 53–77.