Caillan Davenport

Biography

Caillan Davenport is Professor of Classics and Head of the Centre for Classical Studies at the Australian National University (ANU). He was educated at the University of Queensland and the University of Oxford, and worked at the University of Queensland and Macquarie University before joining the ANU.

He is an expert on the politics and government of the ancient Mediterranean world, with special interests in rulership, royal courts, administration, and dynastic politics. Caillan is the author of A History of the Roman Equestrian Order (Cambridge University Press, 2019), which won the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize, and Behind Caesar’s Back: Rumor, Gossip, and the Making of the Roman Emperors (Yale University Press, 2026).

Caillan’s work on Roman politics and political culture has led to several collaborative projects. He has co-authored a translation and commentary on the letters of Fronto, tutor to the emperor Marcus Aurelius, Fronto: Selected Letters (with Jennifer Manley; Bloomsbury, 2014), and co-edited three collected volumes: Emperors and Political Culture in Cassius Dio’s Roman History (with Christopher Mallan; Cambridge University Press, 2021), The Roman Imperial Court in the Principate and Late Antiquity (with Meaghan McEvoy; Oxford University Press, 2023), and Representing Rome’s Emperors: Historical and Cultural Perspectives through Time (with Shushma Malik; Oxford University Press, 2024). His research has been supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award and a Future Fellowship, and an Experienced Researcher Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Photo credit: Maggie Otto