Massimo Betello

Massimo Betello, who joined JCU in 2012, is a Roman archaeologist with a Ph.D. in Classics from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. He received his Laurea Magistrale in Classical Archaeology from the University of Venice "Ca’ Foscari" with a thesis on the architectural development of a small atrium house in the Roman city of Pompeii (VI.7.3). The thesis was then reworked with Chiara Maratini and published as a chapter in Rileggere Pompei IV, part of the book series “Studi e ricerche del Parco Archeologico di Pompei.”

He was an exchange student at the University of Warwick (UK) and an intern at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin). He won a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. degree in archeology in the USA. He became a graduate student in the Department of Classical Studies at SUNY Buffalo, where he wrote a dissertation about the management and exploitation of pedestrian traffic in the ancient city of Pompeii (advisor: Professor Steve Dyson). In 2009, he received an Excellence in Teaching Award from the SUNY Graduate School.

His work as an archaeologist has been mostly directed toward Italy as a member of Italian and international missions. He has excavated at Altino, Aquileia, Asolo, Monte Palazzi, Padova, Treviso, and especially Pompeii, where he was a trench supervisor for the Ca’ Foscari University project about Regio VI. He has co-authored and published some excavation reports of this mission in Rivista di Studi Pompeiani.

He has been the vice-director of the British Archeological Project at Grumentum (Basilicata) from 2016 to 2019, where, with the Director, Dr. Taylor Lauritsen, he explored a retail and production building in the center of this ancient Lucano-Roman city. Together with Lauritsen, he has published the excavation reports of this project in Fasti online.

He has been featured on the Netflix documentary “Empire Games” where he discussed the Roman emperors Caligula and Nero.

For the summers of 2022 and 2023, the director of the Classical Summer School of the American Academy in Rome—Prof. Sanjaya Thakur (Colorado College)—invited Prof. Betello as a guest lecturer to present the history and architecture of the Pantheon in Rome.

He has taught at John Cabot University, at the Rome center of Loyola University Chicago, at the American University of Rome, at the Rome program of Richmond University (UK), at the American Institute of Foreign Studies (Rome), at CIEE (Rome), and at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies (Rome).

At JCU, he teaches courses on Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece (history, archaeology, architecture, religion, society, and art). He also lectures on Classical Mythology, Roman literature, and Identity in the Roman Empire. Finally, he has taught Latin language at all levels.

His research interests focus on two aspects of pedestrian traffic in the ancient world: 1) the influence of urban walkers on the establishment and location of retail activities and bench tombs; 2) the level of management that urban officials applied to the flux of pedestrians in areas of congestion.

Since January 2023, he has held the position of tenure-track Associate Professor of Classics in the Department of History and Humanities at John Cabot University.