Biography
I was an undergraduate and graduate student at St John's College, Cambridge. Since 2007 I have taught in the Faculty of Classics and been a Fellow of Emmanuel College. I have also spent time at Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar, and at the Freie Universität Berlin and Rostock University as a Humboldt Fellow.
Research
I work on Latin literature of the early Roman Empire, especially Pliny the Younger and Tacitus, with particular interests in prose style, intertextuality and the intersection of literature and history. My main research projects at the moment are a 'green and yellow' commentary on Tacitus Annals 14, a book on associative intratextuality in Tacitus and a monograph provisionally entitled Tacitus revoiced: reading the Histories with Pliny the Younger.
Publications
Monographs
Pliny the Younger. Epistles book II, Cambridge (2013).
The arts of imitation in Latin prose: Pliny’s Epistles / Quintilian in brief, Cambridge (2019).
Edited volumes
R. K. Gibson and C. L. Whitton, eds., The Epistles of Pliny. Oxford readings in Classical studies, Oxford (2016).
A. R. König and C. L. Whitton, eds., Roman literature under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian: literary interactions, AD 96-138, Cambridge (2018).
R. K. Gibson, and C. L. Whitton, eds., The Cambridge critical guide to Latin literature, Cambridge (2024).
Articles and chapters
‘Pliny, Epistles 8.14: senate, slavery and the Agricola’, JRS 100 (2010) 118-39.
‘Dubitatio comparativa: a misunderstood idiom in Pliny (Natural history 7.150), Tacitus (Histories 4.6) and others’, CQ 61 (2011) 267-77.
‘“Let us tread our path together”: Tacitus and the Younger Pliny’, in V. E. Pagán, ed., Blackwell companion to Tacitus, Malden, MA (2012) 345-68.
‘Seneca, Apocolocyntosis’, in E. Buckley and M. T. Dinter, eds., Blackwell companion to the Neronian age, Malden, MA (2013) 151-69.
‘Trapdoors: false closure in Pliny’, in F. Grewing, B. Acosta-Hughes and A. Kirichenko, eds., The door ajar: false closure in Greek and Roman literature and art, Heidelberg (2013) 43-61.
‘Minerva on the Surrey Downs: reading Pliny (and Horace) with John Toland’, CCJ 60 (2014) 127-57.
‘Grand designs: unrolling Epistles 2’, in I. Marchesi, ed., Pliny the book-maker: betting on posterity in the Epistles, Oxford (2015) 109-43.
‘Pliny on the precipice (Ep., 9.26)’, in O. Devillers, ed., Autour de Pline le Jeune. En l’honneur de Nicole Méthy, Bordeaux (2015) 217-36.
‘Pliny’s progress: on a troublesome Domitianic career’, Chiron 45 (2015) 1-22.
C. L. Whitton and R. K. Gibson, ‘Readers and readings of Pliny’s Epistles’, in R. K. Gibson and C. L. Whitton, eds., The Epistles of Pliny. Oxford readings in Classical studies, Oxford (2016) 1-48.
M. J. Squire and C. L. Whitton, ‘Machina sacra: Optatian and the lettered art of the Christogram’, in I. Garipzanov, C. Goodson and H. Maguire, eds., Graphic signs of identity, power and faith in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, Turnhout (2017) 45-108.
A. R. König and C. L. Whitton, ‘Introduction’, in A. R. König and C. L. Whitton, eds., Roman literature under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian: literary interactions, AD 96-138, Cambridge (2018) 1-34.
‘Quintilian, Pliny, Tacitus’, in A. R. König and C. L. Whitton, eds., Roman literature under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian: literary interactions, AD 96-138, Cambridge (2018) 37-62.
‘Context, commentary and Pliny (Epistles 9.3)’, in U. Tische, A. Forst and U. Gärtner, eds., Text, Kontext, Kontextualisierung: Moderne Kontextkonzepte und antike Literatur, Hildesheim (2018) 137-60.
'The arts of self-imitation in Pliny (and the date of Panegyricus)', Maia 71 (2019) 339-79.
‘Biography and praise in Trajanic Rome: Tacitus’ Agricola and Pliny’s Panegyricus’, in K. de Temmerman, ed., Oxford handbook of ancient biography, Oxford (2020) 153-68.
‘Last but not least: Ad M. Brutum’, in R. K. Gibson and R. Morello, eds., The epistolary Cicero: further readings in the Letters (= Hermathena 202-203, 2022) 185-223.
'Man of many parts (Lucretius, Cicero, Valerius Maximus, Tacitus)', in S. Tzounakas and M. Neger, eds., Intertextuality in Pliny's Epistles, Cambridge (2023) 29-46.
'Annals 14', in S. Bartera and K. Shannon-Henderson, eds., The Oxford critical guide to Tacitus (2025) 200-14.
'Light weight: Pliny (with Tacitus) on master-murder (Ep. 3.14), in L. Cordes, M. Formisano and J. Saldo, eds., Lightness – quickness – multiplicity: three memos for Classicists. Italo Calvino and ancient literature, Leiden (2025) 105-26.
‘Histories lost and found: Tacitus and Pliny on Vesuvius’, in P. Christoforou and B. ten Berge, eds., Tacitus and the incomplete, Ann Arbor (forthcoming).
'From memory to history: Tacitus' Octavia', in M. T. Dinter and M. Martinho de Santos, eds., Roman cultural memory under the Empire, Cambridge (forthcoming).
Encyclopedia entries
‘Juvenal (D. Iunius Iuvenalis)’, in Blackwell encyclopedia of ancient history, Malden, MA (2012).
‘Pliny the Younger’, in Literary encyclopedia, www.litencyc.com (2013).
'Pliny (2) the Younger', in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, digital edition (2022).
‘Pliny the Younger’, in V. E. Pagán, ed. The Tacitus encyclopedia, Malden, MA (2023).
Book reviews
Krebs, C. B. 2005. Negotiatio Germaniae: Tacitus’ Germania und Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Giannantonio Campano, Conrad Celtis und Heinrich Bebel. Göttingen. BMCR 2005.12.17.
Giua, M. A., ed. 2007. Ripensando Tacito (e Ronald Syme): Storia e storiografia, Florence. BMCR 2008.09.53.
Marchesi, I. 2008. The art of Pliny’s letters. A poetics of allusion in the private correspondence, Cambridge. NECJ 36.1 (2009) 65-8.
Rimell, V. 2008. Martial’s Rome: empire and the ideology of the epigram, Cambridge. NECJ 36.4 (2009) 300-2.
Sailor, D. 2008. Writing and empire in Tacitus, Cambridge. Phoenix 65 (2012) 194-6.
Braund, S. 2009. Seneca: De Clementia, Oxford. Classical World 104 (2011) 368-9.
Carlon, J. 2009. Pliny’s women: constructing virtue and creating identity in the Roman world, Cambridge. CR 60.2 (2010) 463-5.
Lefèvre, E. 2009. Vom Römertum zum Ästhetizismus: Studien zu den Briefen des jüngeren Plinius, Berlin. CR 61.1 (2011) 147-9.
Krebs, C. B. 2011. A most dangerous book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich, New York. TLS 24.2.2012, p.24.
Roche, P. A., ed. 2011. Pliny’s praise: The Panegyricus in the Roman world, Cambridge. CR 62.2 (2012) 521-3.
Zehnacker, H. and N. Méthy. 2011. Pline le Jeune Lettres. Tome II: Livres IV–VI, Paris. CR 63.1 (2013) 125-7.
Glare, P. G. W. et al., ed. 2012. Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford. TLS 20.7.2012, p.28.
Peirano, I. 2012. The rhetoric of the Roman fake: Latin pseudepigrapha in context, Cambridge. TLS 26.4.2013, p.23.
Winsbury, R. 2014. Pliny the Younger. A life in Roman letters, London. Gnomon 87.6 (2015) 559-61.
Devillers, O., ed. 2014. Les opera minora et le développement de l’historiographie tacitienne, Bordeaux. JRS 105 (2015) 447-8.
Geisthardt, J. M. 2015. Zwischen Princeps und Res Publica. Tacitus, Plinius und die senatorische Selbstdarstellung in der Hohen Kaiserzeit, Stuttgart. Histos 9 (2015) xlvi-liv.
Jenkyns, R. 2015. Classical literature. A Pelican introduction, London. TLS 29.5.15, p.11.
Fitzgerald, W. 2016. Variety: the life of a Roman concept, Chicago. TLS 14.9.16, p.14.
Van der Poel, M., M. Edwards and J. J. Murphy, eds. 2021. The Oxford handbook of Quintilian, Oxford. CR 73 (2023) 145-7.
Foss, P. W. 2022. Pliny and the eruption of Vesuvius, London. Gnomon 97 (2005) 290-5.
Latin literature review for Greece & Rome issues 65.1 (2018) to 68.2 (2021).
Teaching and Supervisions
I have supervised undergraduate dissertations and MPhil research on a range of topics and authors from Homer to Wieland, primarily on Latin literature. I have supervised doctoral work on Seneca, Tacitus, Juvenal, Suetonius and pseudo-Quintilian among others. I welcome enquiries from potential postgraduate students, especially but not only those working on imperial Latin prose and the Trajanic period.
