Dr. Andrea Pierozzi

 

Kontakt

Dr. Andrea Pierozzi, PhD

E-mail: andrea.pierozzi(at)unimi.it

 

Seminar im Wintersemester 2025/26

“Unreasoning fury and passion of brutes”: Celts and Gauls in Classical sources from early Greek navigation in the West to the Hellenistic and Roman power dynamics”

The course offers an overview of ancient Greek and Roman sources concerning peoples identified as “Celts” and “Gauls” and the spaces in which they located them. While deepening key moments of ancient history and engaging with ancient Greek and Roman historical, geographical and ethnographical thought, spanning from the time of Herodotus to that of Caesar, students will have the opportunity to be introduced to the field of Celtic studies, which intersects with research areas such as history, archaeology and linguistics. Ancient sources and scientific literature will provide the core of the course’s tools. The collective and interactive reading of primary sources will leave ample room for student initiative and perspectives.

The quotation reported in the title, coming from Pausanias’ account of the Gallic attack on Delphi in 279/278 BC, provides a vivid example of how these peoples were perceived in antiquity. The course will guide students in analyzing this kind of narrative critically and interpreting it in the broader context of ancient Greek and Roman culture.

 

General Research Interestes

• Ancient geography and ethnography, with a particular interest in Celts, Gauls and Galatians and the representation of Western and Northern Europe in Greek and Roman sources.
• Greek historiography and oratory (Classical and Hellenistic).
• Ancient warfare.

 

Affiliations and Research Experience

• 2024-2025, Post-doc fellow in Greek history at the University of Milan, PRIN 2022 PNRR project Performing Power: Political Communication, Consensus and Audiences in the Ancient Cities (funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU), with a research project about Demosthenes’ use of enargeia as a rhetorical tool against Philip II.
• 2019 – 2023, PhD in Historical Studies in Florence, with a thesis entitled “Keltoi in Greek literary sources between the sixth and fourth centuries BC”, focusing on Keltoi and Keltike as geographical concepts.

 

Other Affiliations 

• Subject expert in Greek History (L-ANT/02) (University of Florence, University of Bologna).

 

Education

• Master degree in Historical and Oriental Sciences, University of Bologna (2018, 110/110 cum laude). Thesis: Gaul-Greek relations and Celtic mercenarism in the Greek world between the fourth and third centuries BC: historical-military and ethnographic aspects.
• Bachelor degree in Classics, University of Florence (2015, 110/110 cum laude)
  Thesis: Leuctra: the historical problem of the oblique phalanx and the Sacred Battalion.

 

Memberships

• Member of the Ernst Kirsten Gesellschaft
• Member of the Rodopis association