Degrees

• Ph.D. in Classics from Florida State University
• M.A. in Classics from Florida State University
• Post-Baccalaureate Program in Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania
• B.A. in Ancient History and Classical Archaeology, and French from Franklin and Marshall College

Biography

Marcaline J. Boyd is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Delaware. Her teaching and research focus on the social, cultural, and political history of ancient Greece and Rome, with particular emphasis on Greek historiography, tyranny, and the dynamics of power.

She is the author of Patterns of Tyranny in Ancient Greece (under contract with Cambridge University Press), which redefines tyranny not as a single model of autocracy but as a set of recurring patterns of rule identifiable across Greek historiography from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period and across the wider Mediterranean and Black Sea worlds. Her research integrates literary, archaeological, and epigraphic evidence, and she has published widely on tyranny in Thessaly, the Black Sea region, and the eastern Aegean, as well as on Herodotus and Plutarch, Hellenistic epigram, and Athenian epigraphy. Her research has been supported by institutional and external grants and fellowships. She is the recipient of the Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award (Spring 2025) and the Gerard J. Mangone Young Scholar Award (Fall 2025).

Dr. Boyd teaches Greek and Latin at all levels, along with courses in ancient literature, history, gender, race and ethnicity, and political thought in translation. She regularly teaches in the Honors Program and currently serves as Chair of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, undergraduate advisor for minors, and faculty advisor to the Delta Tau chapter of Eta Sigma Phi, the National Honorary Society for Classical Studies.
 

Publications

For a comprehensive view of Marcaline’s publication, visit her Academia profile page in Resources and Links

• Boyd, M.J. “Meleager and the War of Love (AP 12.48 = 16 G-P).” Mnemosyne 68 (2015), 488–493.
• Boyd, M.J.“Polyaenus and Polycrates’ Rise to Power.” Papers of the Langford Latin Seminar 17 (2018): 71–88. Oxbow.
• Boyd, M.J. “Sleeping with the Tyrant: Thebe the Tyrannicide and the Death of Alexander of Pherae in Plutarch’s Pelopidas.” Histos 15 (2021): 131–149.
• Boyd, M.J. Review of S. Lewis, ed. Tyranny: New Contexts (Besançon, 2021) for Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2023.10.37 (https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2023/2023.10.37/).
• Boyd, M.J. “Not Stratēgos Autokratōr: Notes on Clearchus’ Rise to Power at Heraclea Pontica.” The Bulletin of Ancient History, 38.1–2 (2024): 60–76.
• Boyd, M.J. “Clearchus of Heraclea Pontica as Stranger-King,” in Stranger Kings in Antiquity, E. Nicholson, H. Anderson, and J. Guthrie, eds. Routledge (2025).