DAVID KOVACS
Hugh H. Obear
Professor of Classics

David Kovacs

Office: B006 Cocke Hall
E-mail: pdk7g@virginia.edu

Research Interests

I have a long-standing interest in text-critical problems as well as in the literary interpretation of Greek tragedy. Other areas of interest include Plato, the fifth-century Sophists, Ovid, Horace, Seneca, and Greek biography.

I have long believed that it is unwise to keep literary interpretation and establishment of the text in separate compartments. Literary interpretation (sometimes implicit) informs the editor's work, and if it is not adequate interpretation, the editor can be led astray. Likewise credulity about the soundness of the text makes literary interpretation less likely to succeed. Interpreting antiquity is a historical enterprise, and we cannot afford to ignore any of the evidence.


Selected Publications

  • The Andromache of Euripides: An Interpretation (Scholars Press: Chico, CA, 1980).
  • The Heroic Muse: Studies in the Hippolytus and Hecuba of Euripides (Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1987).
  • Euripides. The Loeb Classical Library Euripides, Greek text and English translation (Harvard University Press), six volumes (1994-2002).
  • Euripidea (E. J. Brill: Leiden, 1994). A companion volume to the Loeb Euripides, vol. 1.
  • Euripidea Altera (E. J. Brill: Leiden, 1996). Notes on the text of the plays of vols. 2 and 3, continues Euripidea.
  • Euripidea Tertia (E. J. Brill, Leiden, 2003). Notes on the text of the plays of vols. 4-6.
  • "On Medea's Great Monologue (Eur. Medea 1021-1080)," CQ 36 (1986), 343-352.
  • "Where is Aegisthus' Head?" CP 37 (1987), 139-141.
  • "Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.2," CQ 37 (1987), 458-465.
  • "Treading the Circle Warily: Literary Criticism and the Text of Euripides," TAPA 117 (1987), 257-270
  • "Zeus in Euripides' Medea," AJP 114 (1993), 45-70.
  • "The Theology of Euripides' Trojan Trilogy," Colby Quarterly 33.2 (1997), 162-76.
  • "Toward a Reconstruction of Euripides' Iphigenia Aulidensis," JHS 123 (2003) 77-103.
  • "Donne's Latin Poem on Jonson's Volpone: Some Observations and a Textual Conjecture," The International Journal of the Classical Tradition 12.4 (2006) 563-8.

Forthcoming

  • "Envy and Akrasia in Seneca's Thyestes."
  • "The Second Person Indefinite and the Logic of Horace, Odes 1.1.29-36."
  • "And Baby Makes Three: Aegeus' Wife as Mother-to-be of Theseus in Euripides' Medea."
  • "The Role of Apollo in Oedipus Tyrannos."
  • "Vergil, Ecl. 4.53-4: enough of what?"
  • Under contract with Oxford University Press: a commentary on Euripides' Troades.

Complete publications (pdf)

Personal

I grew up in Ohio and took a B.A. in classics and philosophy from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. I did my M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard. I came to Virginia in 1976, where I have served as Chairman of the Department as well as Director of Graduate Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies. My wife, also an Ohioan, is a member of the Religious Studies Department and teaches New Testament Greek, early Christianity, and (occasionally) Old Testament. We have two children, one of whom graduated from U.Va. When not teaching or doing research I am a dedicated amateur musician and sing in an early music ensemble that performs everything from Machaut, Taverner, and Josquin Desprez down to Purcell and Bach, with the occasional foray into the twentieth century.

I have been away on research leave in Washington, D. C. (the Center for Hellenic Studies), Oxford (Balliol College, All Souls College), and Cambridge (Trinity College). I always return, however, convinced that there is no place quite like Virginia, where I feel blessed in my students, my colleagues, and our lovely surroundings.