Name T. Wiseman Role Author | Education Balliol College | |
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Books Remus, The myths of Rome, Catullus and his world, Clio's cosmetics, New Men in the Roman S | ||
Timothy Peter Wiseman FBA (born 3 February 1940), who usually publishes as T. P. Wiseman and is named as Peter Wiseman in other sources, is a classical scholar and professor emeritus of the University of Exeter. He has published numerous books and articles, primarily on the literature and the social and political history of the late Roman Republic, but also the mythography of early Rome and Roman theatre.
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Among Wiseman's students at Exeter was J.K. Rowling, about whose encounters with ancient authors he has written. Because of his connection with Rowling, Wiseman attracted brief pop-culture notoriety when media speculated that he was a model for the character of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series of books and movies.
Life and career
Wiseman was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Balliol College, Oxford. He was a lecturer at the University of Leicester from 1963 to 1976. Wiseman was Professor of Classics at Exeter from 1977 to 2001, and head of the department until 1990. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1986 and served as its vice-president in 1992–94.
Wiseman and his wife, Anne, also a classicist, have been married since 1962. The two collaborated on a translation of Julius Caesar's Gallic War commentaries published in 1980. The conference "Myth, History, and Performance: A Celebration of the Work of T.P. Wiseman" was held at Exeter in March 2000 and was the basis for the book Myth, History, and Culture in Republican Rome: Studies in Honour of T.P. Wiseman (2003). In 2004, Wiseman's book The Myths of Rome won the Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Philological Association and was nominated for the British Academy Book Prize.
Assessment
In a review of Remembering the Roman People (2009), Mary Beard commented on Wiseman's methodology in trying to tease out a view of Roman popularist politics from elite-dominated sources:
The Harry Potter connection
Wiseman was a teacher of J.K. Rowling when she was a student at Exeter from 1983 to 1986. In 2000, when Rowling was presented with an honorary doctorate from Exeter, Wiseman gave the introductory speech. In 2002, he published the article "At Figulus … : J.K. Rowling and the ancient world," in which he presents, in his words, "the only accurate account of what ancient authors Harry Potter's creator encountered when she was a student at Exeter." The title refers to Nigidius Figulus, the friend of Cicero who was a praetor and Pythagorean scholar in the 1st century BC and took on a legendary status in the later European magic tradition; figulus is the Latin word for "potter."
Media, including daily newspapers and blogs, have speculated that Wiseman inspired the creation of the character Albus Dumbledore. The Scotsman published a protracted comparison of the real-life professor and the fictional wizard, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry:
Whether or not this comparison was meant to be tongue-in-cheek (Wiseman debunked the last point by declaring that he has "a rather dry taste; bitter beer, dry white wine"), it has been picked up not only in fan blogs and other websites, but by newspapers such as The Independent and by the BBC. A writer for The Guardian noted that Rowling "studied classics and French at Exeter University and is rumoured to have based Dumbledore on the splendidly bearded Peter Wiseman, Exeter's classics professor emeritus." Wiseman again demurred at the identification in a letter to the editor: