John Izzo joined the Department of Classics at Kenyon College in 2025. He studies Roman slavery, Latin literature, and classical reception. His primary research project investigates the life, writings, and reception of Marcus Tullius Tiro, a Roman freedman who had formerly been enslaved to Cicero.
Prior to Kenyon, Izzo was the assistant professor at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, where he taught an advanced Latin course on Lucretius’ “De rerum natura” and team-taught an interdisciplinary course on Roman history, art, and archaeology.
Izzo was the recipient of the 2022 Millicent Mercer Johnsen Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome. While completing his doctorate at Columbia, he was appointed as a core curriculum preceptor for Literature Humanities, a two-semester course on ancient, medieval, and modern literature.
Areas of Expertise
Ancient slavery, Latin literature, classical reception, Roman intellectual culture and philosophy
Education
2024 — Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia University
2017 — Master of Arts from University of Notre Dame
2015 — Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College
Courses Recently Taught
This course surveys the history of the ancient Romans from their early years as a negligible people in central Italy to their emergence as the supreme power in the Mediterranean and, finally, to the eve of their displacement as rulers of the greatest empire in antiquity. The course combines a chronological account of the Romans' remarkable political history with an examination of Roman society, including subjects such as gender, demography and slavery. We read from a variety of ancient sources, including the historians Polybius, Livy and Tacitus and the poets Horace and Vergil. We also mine the evidence offered by coins, inscriptions, papyri and even graffiti, which provide invaluable insight into the realia of daily life. This counts as a core course requirement for the major. No prerequisite. Offered every other year.
It is impossible to understand the cultures of the West without some knowledge of classical mythology. Not only are some myths wildly entertaining, they permeate popular imagination and life to this day. This course focuses on the evidence from ancient Greece and Rome but may also include material from other traditions. Class discussion explores some of the overarching themes contained within the myths themselves and how these stories have influenced modern culture through literature and art. At the same time, students have a chance to observe how the treatment of different myths changes from author to author, thus revealing what issues were important to the people who told them. This counts toward the core course requirement for the major. No prerequisite. Offered every year.
It is a great pleasure to read Homer in Greek, and this course seeks to help students do so with accuracy and insight. Students acquire a working knowledge of Homer's vocabulary and syntax, and explore some of the key literary and historical questions that have occupied his readers. Offered every spring.
Students improve their skills in reading Greek and discuss scholarship on the author or authors being read that semester. Each semester the readings change, so that GREK 301 and 302 can be taken, to the student's advantage, several times. Students are encouraged to inform the instructor in advance if there is a particular genre, author or theme they would especially like to study. The list of authors taught in this course includes the lyric poets; the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes; and great prose stylists such as Plato and Thucydides, to name just a few. Offered every fall.
Students improve their skills in reading Greek and discuss scholarship on the author or authors being read that semester. Each semester the readings change, so that GREK 301 and 302 can be taken, to the student's advantage, several times. Students are encouraged to inform the instructor in advance if there is a particular genre, author or theme they would especially like to study. The list of authors taught in this course includes the lyric poets; the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes; and great prose stylists such as Plato and Thucydides, to name just a few. Offered every spring.
The goal of this course is to cultivate students' skills as readers of continuous Latin prose. To this end, students expand their vocabulary as well as review and refine their understanding of the morphology and syntax of classical Latin. Upon completing this course, students read Latin prose with greater precision, nuance and speed. Authors read with some regularity in this course include Caesar, Cicero and Sallust; however, the particular text or texts vary from year to year and may be complemented with a selection of poems, for example those of Catullus. Offered every fall.
In this course, students improve their skills in reading Latin and discuss scholarship on the author or authors being read during the semester. Each semester the readings change, so that LATN 301 and 302 can be taken, to the student's advantage, several times. Students are encouraged to inform the instructor if there is a particular genre, author or theme they would especially like to study. The list of authors regularly taught in this course includes Horace and Ovid; the comic poet Plautus; and great prose stylists such as Livy, Tacitus, Petronius and Augustine, to name just a few. Offered every spring.