Ph.D. Laurens van der Wiel

Biography

I am a classicist focusing on early imperial Greek literature. After having obtained my master’s degree in 2018 at the Catholic University of Leuven, I started my PhD at the same institute, as part of the research project “Longing for Perfection. Living the Perfect Life in Late Antiquity – A Journey Between Ideal and Reality”. In 2022, I defended my doctoral dissertation, entitled “An Opaque Mirror for Trajan. A Literary Analysis and Interpretation of Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata” (supervisors: Geert Roskam and Joseph Verheyden). I am currently part of the project “Thinking of Thinking. Conceptual Metaphors of Cognition in the Plutarchan Corpus”.

Most important scholarly articles

van der Wiel, L. (2024), “Exempla for the Emperors. A Comparison of the Prefaces to Valerius Maximus’ Facta et dicta memorabilia and Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata”, in Jażdżewska, K. – Doroszewski, F. (eds.), Plutarch and his Contemporaries: Sharing the Roman Empire, Leiden: Brill (Plutarch Studies 14)
van der Wiel, L. (2023), “A Proposal for Restructuring Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata”, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 63, 1–26
van der Wiel, L. (2023), “Human Perfection in Plutarch. Finding the Right Balance between Philosophy and Politics in the Comparison of Aristeides and Cato Maior”, in Leemans, J. – Roskam, G. – Van Deun, P. (eds.), Longing for Perfection in Late Antiquity, Leiden: Brill, 231–253 (Ancient Philosophy and Religion 11)
van der Wiel, L. (2021), “Wonder and the Divine. The Eternal Chain in Plutarch’s De E apud Delphos 384D–385D”, Ploutarchos 18, 71–86