Rate My Professor Harold Tarrant

Harold Tarrant is Emeritus Professor in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Science, College of Human and Social Futures, at the University of Newcastle, where he joined in December 1993 from the School of Archaeology, Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney. He earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from the University of Durham. Professor Tarrant has held positions as Head of the Department of Classics and Head of the School of Liberal Arts from 2002 to 2005, and he has served on various university committees while convening the post-2005 BA degree on multiple occasions. His main academic interests lie in Greek Philosophy, particularly ancient Platonism from Socrates to the Alexandrian Neoplatonists, encompassing the Academy in the time of Philo of Larissa, Thrasyllan Platonism and corpus organisation, Middle Platonism's interpretation of Plato, and Proclus' readings of Plato. Additional foci include the intersection of literature and philosophy in Platonic dialogues and commentaries by figures such as Plutarch, Apuleius, and later Neoplatonists, alongside aspects of Greek Comedy, especially Aristophanes, and the ancient Novel. He teaches Ancient Greek language, Greek Drama, and Greek conceptions of ethical and political questions.

Professor Tarrant's extensive publications include From the Old Academy to Later Neo-Platonism: Studies in the History of Platonic Thought (2024), Chaerephon: Rethinking Platonic Characters in the Light of the Derveni Papyrus (2024), The Second Alcibiades: A Platonist Dialogue on Prayer and on Ignorance (2023), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity (2018), Plato's Method of Hypothesis in the Middle Dialogues (2018), Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, vol. 6, Book 5 (2017), The Platonic Alcibiades I: The Dialogue and its Ancient Reception (2015), The Bloomsbury Companion to Plato (2015), The Neoplatonic Socrates (2014), Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, Volume 1, Book 1: Proclus on the Socratic State and Atlantis (2007), Recollecting Plato's Meno (2005), and Plato's First Interpreters (2000). He is an Executive Member of the International Plato Society and a member of several organisations promoting ancient philosophy and classical studies, contributing centrally to the study of ancient Platonism.