Tom Keeline’s research and teaching interests extend to all aspects of the ancient world and its reception, with a particular focus on Latin literature—from antiquity to the present—and the history of classical education and scholarship.
In the past, Tom has published books, articles, and reviews in the fields of Latin literature, lexicography, metrics, the history of classical scholarship and the classical tradition, textual criticism, commentary-writing, digital approaches to Classics, and language pedagogy, and he expects to continue working in all of these areas.
His first book, The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire: The Rhetorical Schoolroom and the Creation of a Cultural Legend, was published in 2018 by Cambridge University Press. In it he shows that Cicero’s early reception is very much conditioned, indeed constructed, by ancient scholarship and the schoolroom, where young Romans first encountered Cicero as they read his speeches and wrote Ciceronian declamations.
His second book, published in 2021, was a commentary on Cicero’s Pro Milone for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series (“Green and Yellows”). Including a comprehensive introduction and a newly constituted Latin text, it provides detailed treatment of Cicero’s language, style, and rhetorical techniques, as well as full discussion of the historical background and the larger social and cultural issues relevant to the speech.
In 2024 he finally finished his digital critical edition of and textual commentary on the Ibis, Ovid’s most obscure and challenging poem. It is currently under encoding and review at the Digital Latin Library.
He is now tinkering with several ideas for articles. These include a piece on classical reception and pedagogy in Edwardian England, particularly as embodied by Ronald Knox; on Latin teaching in Senegal and Malawi; and on a thorny technical problem of pauses and syllable length in Latin verse. Any of these has the potential to grow into something rather bigger.
Tom is a strong proponent of active Latin both in and outside the classroom. He teaches his Latin classes in large part in Latin, and he co-founded the Grex Ludouicopolitanus to promote spoken Latin in the St. Louis community. He finds that this activity—to paraphrase somewhat the immortal words of Bishop Gaisford—not only elevates above the common herd, but also leads not infrequently to considerable fun and profit. If you’re in the St. Louis area and interested in speaking Latin, please get in touch! In 2018 he co-founded the Latin podcast Philologia Perennis with Patrick Owens. The podcast embraces things Latin, in Latin, from antiquity to the present; although now dormant, it may revive again.
Once upon a time Tom had hobbies, but now he has children, Tommy (born 2014), James (2016), Claire (2017), Lucy (2020), Emily (2022), and Sophia (2024). He still enjoys running, lifting weights, and reading novels. He finds that this last activity, if you argue the case with yourself with sufficient subtlety, can be construed as productive work too. Over the past couple years he’s also discovered the utterly unexpected fun of running in races, and he’s started to take running seriously enough that it probably really does qualify as a hobby now.
