Before coming to Yale he taught at Kent State University, Ohio State University and the University of Illinois. At Ohio State he was Associate Dean of the Humanities and at Illinois he was Chair of the Department of Classics. His research has long focused on the social life of Roman letters, especially on the unique cultural encodings that structure and inform Roman ideas of poetry, and the practical implementation of those ideas in specific poetic forms, especially satire. His main publications include: The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire (Princeton, 1993), Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal (Cambridge, 2001), the Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire (Cambridge, 2005), and Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Horace’s Satires and Epistles (Oxford University Press, 2009). Currently he is writing a commentary on the second book of Horace’s Sermones for the Cambridge Green and Yellows.