Alberto Rigolio is Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, UK. Previously he worked at the Universities of Princeton and Oxford.

He specializes on the intellectual and religious history of the Eastern Mediterranean world during the Roman and Late Antique periods. He uses Syriac, alongside Greek and Latin, to argue for a new and more comprehensive approach to the study of the ancient world.

Before joining Durham University in 2018, he spent three years at the Princeton Society of Fellows, and worked as Lecturer at Merton College, Oxford. He is also a regular contributor to the Dumbarton Oaks/HMML Syriac Summer School. For his teaching activity, see this page; and for a list of publications, see here.

Current Research Projects

In the Roman Empire literature was almost invariably written in Greek or Latin. Traces of literature in other languages, such as Gaulish or Punic, are rare. Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, stands out as a significant exception. The use of Syriac was initially confined to the city of Edessa in Northern Mesopotamia and its hinterland, but from the second century CE Syriac gave rise to one of the most prestigious literatures of late antiquity and beyond. Syriac literature flourished for more than a millennium in its classical form; it came to play a fundamental role in the identity and culture of Christian communities across the Near East and Asia along the Silk Roads, and approximately a million speakers still use Syriac today, in its modern varieties. The aim of this project, supported by the British Academy and the Princeton IAS, is to understand how a local dialect became the vehicle of one the richest and most prestigious literatures of the first millennium.

Please see below the recording of an academic talk on this subject, from Jan. 15, 2024. The handout is available here.

The Rise of Syriac (2023-24)

Syriac Rhetoric (2023-25)

Dr Mara Nicosia (BA Newton International Fellow)
The Syriac Rhetorical Tradition between Greco-Roman paideia and Arabic Aristotelianism

This project, with support from the British Academy, aims to reshape our understanding of Syriac intellectual culture by investigating its engagement with late antique paideia and with Aristotelian rhetoric. Greek secular texts such as Isocrates, Plutarch and Themistius were available in Syriac translation from as early as the fourth-fifth centuries CE, but it is yet to be ascertained how Syriac Christians used these texts and how the curriculum of Syriac rhetorical studies emerged. This project seeks to achieve this goal through the first systematic study of Antony of Tagrit’s Syriac treatise On Rhetoric (ninth cent.). Antony, a teacher of rhetoric, was the first known Syriac scholar to articulate rhetoric as an academic subject; his comprehensive treatise demonstrates engagement with the Syriac classics (Ephrem, Jacob of Serug), secular Greco-Roman culture (Homer, Plutarch, and the progymnasmata), and Christian rhetoric (Gregory of Nazianzus).

The Roman Household in Late Antiquity (2023-26)

Dr Karl Dahm (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow)
The Roman Household in Late Antique Church Conflicts

With support from the Leverhulme Trust, this project studies the Roman household in the context of late antique church conflicts. While much attention has been paid to the Christological controversies in this period, their impact on the Roman family has so far been largely neglected. Focusing on the contrasting social milieus of Constantinople and the Near East, this project will reshape our understanding of the role that the Roman family played during the intra-Christian divisions between the fourth and the early seventh century CE. It will demonstrate that the existing divisions along Christological lines within Christian households were crucial to the rise of early monasticism and the transition from a Roman to an early medieval society.

Syriac Manuscripts and the Construction of Culture (2024-27)

Dr Jacob Lollar (BA International Fellow)
Syriac Manuscripts and the Construction of Culture: Para-Biblica in the Late Antique and Medieval Middle East

This project, supported by the British Academy, explores the uses and functions of “para-biblical” narratives within Syriac cultures. Although such narratives have been identified and studied by modern scholars, their functions within the communities that produced them still await for systematic investigation. Not only were these stories entertaining, useful for liturgy, and important for the cult of saints, but they were also used by Syriac cultures to tell their history––and to re-write that history to suit the needs of new audiences. On the basis of a study of both the texts and the manuscripts that contain them, this project will demonstrate how Syriac authors wrote competing versions of para-biblical narratives to (re-)shape the societies around them.

Past research includes a book on Greek and Syriac literature in dialogue form by Christian authors during Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2019). These dialogues, on religious, philosophical, and political subjects, show that the classical dialogue form did not disappear with the rise of Christianity but was instead transformed, and reinvigorated, alongside of cultural and religious change. This vibrant tradition of writing in dialogue form (at least sixty dialogues survive until the end of the sixth century CE, only in Greek and Syriac) attests to the emergence and the development of a particular culture of debate on theological and philosophical matters. Read more here.

Prof. Rigolio also works on the translation of Greek texts into Syriac and Arabic, and, more broadly, on the reception of Graeco-Roman thought in early Christianity and Islam. He published on the Syriac and Arabic translations of Aristotle’s Poetics, on a Syriac dialogue with Socrates on the soul, and on the Syriac translations of Ps.-Isocrates, Plutarch, Lucian, and Themistius. One of these texts surviving only in Syriac, a philosophical oration by Themistius known as On Virtue, may reveal Themistius’ lukewarm engagement with emperor Julian’s project of pagan restoration.