About

Yelena Baraz is the Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin Language and Literature and serves as the Director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at Princeton University. She specializes in Latin literature, Roman cultural history, and the history of ideas. She received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2004 and held the APA-NEH postdoctoral fellowship at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich during 2004-2005. Prior to her appointment at Princeton in 2007, she taught at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Her scholarly work focuses on how literary texts shape and are shaped by social and cultural forces. Her first book, 'A Written Republic: The Cultural Politics of Cicero's Philosophy,' published by Princeton in 2012, examines the philosophical writings of Cicero produced in the 40s BCE under Caesar's dictatorship, analyzing writing philosophy as a cultural act within its historical and cultural context. Her second book, 'Reading Roman Pride,' published by Oxford in 2020, investigates the political and literary transformations of the social emotion of pride in Latin texts through various approaches. She has also co-edited a special issue of the American Journal of Philology on intertextuality and has contributed articles and chapters on authors such as Pliny, Vergil, Lucan, and Seneca, as well as lexicographical articles for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Currently, she is working on a study of post-Vergilian pastoral, especially Calpurnius Siculus, and pursuing smaller projects on post-Vergilian epic. She has returned to Cicero's corpus, aiming to write a Very Short Introduction, and is collaborating with Jhumpa Lahiri on a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses for the Modern Library. Her teaching interests include Latin at all levels, from beginning language courses to graduate seminars on Latin literature, with courses on Roman satire, Plautus, Roman epistolography, and Senecan tragedy. She supervises dissertations on Vergil’s Eclogues, Petronius’ Satyrica, and themes of exile, and was awarded the President's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2013.

Research topics

• Art
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Literature
• Computer Science
• Chemistry
• Classics
• Theology
• Linguistics
• History
• Law
• Archaeology
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Conclusion

  2026-03-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <i>Patronus Praesens</i> and the Date of the Collection

  2026-03-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 5 examines the novel configuration of the patron-poet relationship in the collection. In contrast to the distant patrons invoked in Vergil’s Bucolics, Calpurnius introduces the patron as a visitor into the pastoral space. The negotiations between poet and singer over the value of poetry reveal the transactional nature of their relationship and poetry is represented as one of many occupations that can provide an escape from poverty. The biographical tradition of reading Vergil’s Bucolics provides an explicit model for constructing the relationship between the poet and the patron as a path toward the goal of imperial patronage. Some features of the picture that emerges align most closely with the works of Martial and especially Juvenal, who represent poets as impoverished laborers in transactional relationships with their patrons. The argument leads to a proposal that we consider dating a controversial corpus like Calpurnius’ on grounds such as these, after more traditional criteria have failed to produce a consensus.

  PublisherDOI

• Becoming a Pastoral Poet

  2026-03-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 1 explores the multiple models for accessing the poetic tradition and learning poetic craft offered within the collection. Against traditional models that portray the poetic gift as inborn or divinely inspired, Calpurnius frames the project of becoming a poet in terms that do not reject inspiration but locate it within the context of teaching and learning within a community of singers. The opening poem has two shepherd brothers receive their divine inspiration not in a direct encounter but mediated by a written prophecy; they set themselves on the path to poetic fame by first reading the prophecy, then composing music to accompany it, and performing it again, in a collaborative model. Also collaborative, but now removed from divine involvement, is the double model presented in the central poem. There the amoebaean exchange is used in part to teach the younger of two brother-singers poetic craft while the patron functions as a prompter and an editor; both types of collaboration highlight the work involved in poetic composition.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  2026-03-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract After presenting some striking features of Calpurnius’ poetry and identifying its promise for answering questions about imperial Latin poetry, the Introduction discusses treatments of pastoral as genre and mode and gives an overview of the history of interpretation of the poetry of Calpurnius Siculus, with a focus on the dating debate. Asserting the interpretive advantages of dehistoricized reading for literary interpretations, it proposes a new account of Calpurnius’ compositional practice in conversation with Kristofer Svensson’s pastoral erasure piece, a work of contemporary classical music, and a new way of thinking about intertextuality in Latin poetry.

  PublisherDOI

• Refusing Sublimation

  2026-03-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 3 takes on Calpurnius’ transformation of another essential feature of pastoral, bucolic competition. It traces the development of amoebaean dynamics from Theocritus through Vergil. first considering the plot and the tone of interaction between the competitors and then exploring the metaphors used to describe them. In these encounters the underlying violence, seen on both levels, is sublimated into competition in the sphere of song. Moving to Calpurnius’ collection, it shows that Calpurnius literalizes the adversarial metaphors found in the works of his predecessors, a development that undoes the process of sublimation of competition and hostility among rival shepherds into song. The exchange of insults that precedes competition in earlier bucolic in Calpurnius expands and in the next to last poem, Eclogue 6, makes the exchange of song impossible, foreclosing future development of this strand of the genre.

  PublisherDOI

• Calpurnius Siculus and the Transformation of Pastoral

  2026-03-05

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Calpurnius Siculus is a marginal poet: his collection of Eclogues has no secure date, and he wrote in a genre considered minor, bucolic poetry, under the shadow of his great predecessor Vergil. This book treats his marginal status as an opportunity to explore questions about how literary tradition developed in imperial Rome. Setting historical context aside, it reads the collection with an exclusive focus on its literary qualities. It proposes a new dynamic model of intertextuality that sees the poet fragmenting his predecessors’ texts to use often discordant pieces as generative seeds for a new poetics. The chapters explore how the collection presents the process of becoming a pastoral poet; how it treats core generic features of pastoral, responsion of human and natural sound and bucolic competition; and how it interacts with new literary developments following the composition of its dominant predecessor text, Vergil’s bucolic collection—and finally returns to the question of the date and proposes a new approach that can be applied beyond pastoral.

  PublisherDOI

• Rupturing the Soundscape

  2026-03-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The second chapter focuses on the transformation of pastoral environment. In one of the most striking departures from expectations about pastoral drawn from Vergil and from the later tradition, the harmonious relationship between human singing and natural sound, a foundational feature of ancient bucolic, is severed in Calpurnius’ collection. It argues that Calpurnius develops intermittent moments of rupture in Vergil’s collection into a sustained poetics of uncoupling: natural sounds are portrayed as obtrusive and need to be silenced to make room for the shepherds’ singing. Among the sources for this rupture are the introduction of awareness of human labor, derived from the Georgics, as distinct from and opposed to the natural world, and the introduction into the natural environment of the emperor as a source of inspiration, replacing nature in that role.

  PublisherDOI

• Calpurnius Siculus

  2026-03-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Containing Elegy

  2026-03-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 4 considers additional energy for the new poetics drawn from the major literary developments that followed the composition of Vergil’s Bucolics. It focuses on the sources for Calpurnius’ innovations found in elegiac poetry of the Augustan period that flourished after Vergil. While Vergil closed his bucolic collection by staging an encounter between bucolic and elegy, personified by Gallus, in Bucolic 10, the last poem of his collection, Calpurnius uses elegiac features throughout his book to develop three distinctive elements of his poetics: the presence of writing, violence toward the beloved, and introduction of language of aesthetic judgment to shepherds’ encounters. All these elements help to create a radically different version of pastoral.

  PublisherDOI

• Orator

  2025-08-21

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter explores public speaking’s crucial role in ancient Rome, highlighting its significance for political, legal, and social life. Roman orators, including Cicero, developed their skills through practical mentorship and formal rhetorical education rooted in Greek traditions. Cicero’s speeches exemplify the three primary oratorical types: forensic, deliberative, and epideictic, showcasing his mastery in persuading audiences by teaching, delighting, and stirring emotions. His works influenced public discourse and rhetorical education for centuries, shaping Latin and European vernacular traditions. Finally, the chapter highlights Cicero’s profound impact on rhetorical theory and practice, establishing him as an enduring model of eloquence.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Christopher S. van den Berg

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• President's Distinguished Teaching Award (2013)
• Named Faculty Director of the Society of Fellows