Edward “Ted” James Champlin, the Cotsen Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, and professor of classics, emeritus, died of cardiac arrest at Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington on Dec. 23, 2024. He was 76.

A specialist in Roman social and cultural history, political theory and law, Champlin joined Princeton’s faculty in 1976 and transferred to emeritus status in 2016.

“Professor Champlin’s scholarship combined broad vision with deep erudition,” said Barbara Graziosi, the Ewing Professor of Greek Language and Literature, professor of classics and department chair. “Among his many contributions, he investigated why certain historical figures — notably the emperors Nero and Tiberius — live on in the collective imagination. He showed how these emperors shaped their public personas but also how each generation reinvented them.”

Although she arrived at Princeton after Champlin’s retirement, Graziosi said that “his intellectual presence is nevertheless palpable to me, confirming that a life devoted to scholarship, teaching and service extends beyond our active years in the profession and, indeed, beyond the boundaries of our lives.”

Robert Connor, the Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics, Emeritus, and a 1961 graduate alumnus who hired Champlin when he was department chair, wrote her in an email after Champlin’s death, “Of a row of separate offices [in East Pyne], he built a community.”

Champlin began his last book, a study of the emperor Tiberius, in 2007, but after many years had set it aside due to illness. In 2022, another longtime colleague, Robert Kaster, the Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin Language and Literature, Emeritus, and professor of classics, emeritus, approached Champlin with his idea to bring the book to fruition. Champlin readily shared everything he had on his hard drive.

“The very substantial articles Ted had already published on Tiberius were so darn good, it was crazy-making to think the material wouldn’t be brought together in a book, even if it wasn’t exactly the book that Ted had originally proposed,” Kaster said. “Tiberius and His Age: Myth, Sex, Luxury, and Power” was published on Nov. 5, 2024, by Princeton University Press, with Champlin as author and Kaster as editor.

The collaboration seems fitting, Graziosi said. “In the book, Champlin argued that individual legacies are never the result of individual efforts alone.”

Brent Shaw, the Andrew Fleming West Professor in Classics, Emeritus, and professor of history, emeritus, said: “Ted Champlin was a prince amongst the modern historians of the Roman empire. He combined the very best of high technique with the most creative ways of seeing things.”

Shaw lauded Champlin’s precision of craft. “For prolix writers like me, he set his strict standard: the fewest words necessary, making each one count. I think that Ted despaired of the rest of us. One year, each of us found a copy of Helen Sword’s ‘Stylish Academic Writing’ in our mailboxes. I got the message.” Shaw said his inbox has been flooded with memorial emails from scholars around the world.

Champlin was born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Toronto. He earned his bachelor’s in modern history in 1970 and his master’s in classics in 1972, both at the University of Toronto, and his D.Phil at Oxford in 1976.

His books probed unilluminated corners of Roman history and upended commonly held accounts of well-known figures.

For his seminal biography “Nero” (Harvard University Press, 2005), Champlin scoured manuscripts of ancient plays, poems and other literary fragments and historical accounts to demonstrate that the Roman’s empire’s most notorious megastar was the mastermind of his own deliberate theatricality.

“Fronto and Antonine Rome” (Harvard University Press, 1980), was a study of M. Cornelius Fronto, tutor to the emperor Marcus Aurelius. “Final Judgments: Duty and Emotion in Roman Wills” (University of California Press, 1991) focused on modest landowners of the Roman empire.

Champlin was most at home in the classroom and taught over 40 different courses during his 41-year tenure at the University. His three immensely popular survey courses, “The Roman Empire,” “The Roman Republic” and “Roman Law,” introduced generations of students to the ancient world. The Class of 1984 named him an honorary class member.

Randall Ganiban earned his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1996 and served as a teaching assistant for Champlin, marveling that a survey course on Roman law could fill an auditorium with 100 undergraduates, semester after semester.

“His ability to craft lectures with insight and wit set a standard for me that I still aim to reach,” said Ganiban, a professor of classics at Middlebury College. “Through his fantastic lectures, the interesting (and amusing) legal cases he wrote for discussion, and the lively debate he had in his weekly sections, he made Roman law not only intellectually challenging but also just fun.”

Outside the classroom, Ganiban also witnessed Champlin’s positive impact on hundreds more undergraduates as head of Butler College, where Ganiban was an assistant head. “He demonstrated genuine interest in helping students and worked tirelessly to improve their lives at Princeton.”

“Ted Champlin was a powerful mentor for me,” said Noel Lenski, another of his TAs, now the Dunham Professor of Classics and History at Yale and department chair of classics.

“He had a fearlessness in questioning received paradigms and a chummy self-confidence that masked his intellectual and personal complexity,” said Lenski, who earned his Ph.D. in 1995, co-advised by Champlin. “He had a knack for reopening scholarly cold cases and finding new clues, shedding light on the stories others had ignored and bringing complicated realities back to life in all their enigmatic detail.”

Andrew Gallia, a member of the Class of 1997 who is now an associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, said Champlin “had a huge impact on my academic trajectory.” The two stayed in touch throughout Gallia’s career.

“Ted steered this naive but eager undergraduate in the right direction without giving too much away, then let me go into Firestone to make discoveries on my own,” Gallia said of his senior thesis adviser. “His enthusiasm for discussing my ideas gave me the confidence that an academic career was something that I could do.”

Andrew Novo, professor of strategic studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., and  adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, graduated in 2002 and took “The Roman Empire” his first semester at Princeton.

“His constant good humor made class joyfully entertaining” and sparked Novo’s interest in Roman history, he said. He took two more classes with Champlin, who also served as his senior thesis adviser.

Champlin was a member of the American Philological Association, the Archaeological Institute of America, the Association of Ancient Historians, the Classical Association of Canada and the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. He also volunteered his time to read translations of ancient epics for audiobooks, recorded for individuals who are blind or visually impaired or have reading disorders or disabilities.

He is survived by his wife, Linda Mahler; sisters Elizabeth Champlin, Marion Jensen and Minota Austin; sons Alexander and James; stepchildren Michael Loughran and Katie Loughran; and step-grandchildren Mimi Ujj and Eero Ujj.

Janet Martin, associate professor of classics, emeritus, and an expert in medieval Latin, died of cardiovascular disease at home in Princeton, New Jersey, on Aug. 30. She was 84.

She joined the Princeton faculty in 1973, where she taught for 37 years, and transferred to emeritus status in 2010.

“Professor Martin was a trailblazer in many respects,” said Barbara Graziosi, the Ewing Professor of Greek Language and Literature, professor of classics and department chair. “She was the first woman appointed to a tenured faculty position in the Department of Classics. As an early member and active participant in the Women’s Classical Caucus (WCC), she made it easier for others to follow suit not just here, but across the U.S. and internationally.” In 1996, Martin co-organized the conference “Feminism and Classics: Framing the Research Agenda” that was among the gatherings held to celebrate Princeton’s 250th anniversary.

Graziosi said the national WCC appointment strengthened Martin’s impact on the field. “She showed how the study of medieval Latin belongs in a classics department, not least by illuminating the context that made it possible for ancient texts to survive and be received by later readers. With her emphasis on transmission and reception — i.e. how ancient texts made it into the modern world — she proposed an expansive vision of our field, which we proudly embrace today. Medieval Latin continues to be an important aspect of what we offer at Princeton Classics.”

Judith Peller Hallett, a founding member of the Women’s Classical Caucus and professor of classics and distinguished scholar-teacher emerita at the University of Maryland-College Park, said: “From its earliest days onward, the WCC benefited mightily from Janet’s keen and probing mind, meticulous labors, and vision of a more principled and equitable future for women, and the study of gender, in the field of classics.”

William Chester Jordan, the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, director of the Humanities Council’s Program in Medieval Studies and a 1973 graduate alumnus, said Martin was indispensable in helping to establish the undergraduate Program in Medieval Studies.

“Janet Martin was an excellent Latinist, who from early in her career at Princeton shared her expertise with many medievalists on the faculty,” he said, noting that she frequently gave invited lectures in the gateway course for undergraduate certificate students in medieval studies. “She inspired a number of them to pursue graduate study in the field.”

W. Robert Connor, the Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics, Emeritus, met Martin at the University of Michigan, when she was a graduate student and he was an instructor; they became colleagues when Martin joined Princeton’s faculty.

“She had an admirable mastery of both ancient and medieval Latin,” he said. “I respected her for her high scholarly standards and her willingness to share her impressive knowledge with those who genuinely wished to learn.”

Christian Wildberg, professor of classics, emeritus, remembered Martin’s collegiality from the moment he joined the faculty.

“Janet was very friendly and supportive (I especially remember her kindness during my job interview), and that continued over the years,” he said. “Whenever I met her in the hallway, I thought there was something avuncular about her, which I appreciated as a new member of the department.”

Martin was born on in 1938 in Bogalusa, Louisiana, one of seven children. Her parents, Bruce Whittington Martin, a paper manufacturing engineer and executive, and Edna Poyas Hall Martin, a homemaker, were both graduates of Louisiana State University. Martin received her bachelor’s in the history and literature of the Middle Ages at Radcliffe College in 1961. At Michigan, she received her master’s in classical studies in 1963 and earned her Ph.D. in medieval Latin from Harvard University in 1968.

After four years as an instructor and assistant professor at Harvard University, including a year as a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Martin spent the rest of her career at Princeton. The Latin, literature and history of the Middle Ages remained at the center of her teaching and scholarship at the University. Her edition of selected letters of Peter the Venerable was published by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in 1974, and there followed a series of papers on the reception and circulation of classical literature in medieval Europe and a study on the text and music of Hildegard of Bingen.

In the classroom, she brought medieval Latin and literature, the classical tradition, and Latin paleography and textual criticism to students. From undergraduate courses on the tragic heroine and women’s writings to a graduate seminar on feminist literary theory and the classics, her teaching helped to open new vistas in the field.

Her undergraduate courses included “The Age of Nero,” “Introduction to Medieval Latin,” “Women’s Texts and Women’s Experience in Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages” and “The World of the Middle Ages,” among others. Her graduate seminars included “Problems in Latin Literature: Feminist Literary Theory and the Classics,” “Survey of Early Medieval Latin Literature” and “The Classical Tradition in the Middle Ages” (sometimes taught as “Medieval Latin Literature and Women’s Experience”), among others.

Daniel Turkeltaub, a 1996 classics major who also earned a certificate in medieval studies, said the “insightful guidance” he gained from Martin as his senior thesis adviser and in the classroom still informs his own work with students as an associate professor and the chair of the classics department at Santa Clara University.

“Professor Martin was a gracious, generous and flexible mentor who would support her students while giving them the space to pursue their own interests,” said Turkeltaub, who took her medieval Latin class senior year. He remembered how she took advantage of the small class size, choosing “fascinating readings for us that were unusual but suited the personal interests of her students.”

When Turkeltaub had trouble deciding on a senior thesis topic, Martin gave him a book she thought would interest him, Ernst Curtius’ “European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages.” A paragraph on page 30 gave him the idea that jumpstarted his thesis. “She helped me build the confidence to write a senior thesis on the rather bizarre topic I had selected — “The Gods of Medieval Troy: An Analysis of the Depictions of the Classical Gods in the Texts of Dares and Dictys” — even though it was not something she had explored before. I have tried to emulate her flexibility and graciousness still today when I advise my own students, even when they bring me ideas for their senior capstone projects that are just as unusual and novel to me as the idea I brought to her 28 years ago.”

Angela Bell, a classics major and member of the Class of 1993, now the vice chancellor for research and policy analysis at the University System of Georgia, took courses in Roman satire and medieval Latin with Martin.

“Professor Martin was very passionate about these topics and her enthusiasm for them shone in her teaching,” said Bell. “In particular, she ensured we got and enjoyed the humor in the satire, and the medieval Latin course provided the opportunity to learn about women authors. Her high standards pushed me to work hard and deepen my essay responses on exams. Her feminist reading of Classical texts was influential as I carried out my independent work at Princeton and even as I taught high school Latin for many years.”

Martin’s many contributions to the University community include a more than a decade’s service on the executive committee of the Program in Medieval Studies, as well as serving as a founding member of the Women’s Studies Committee and an associated faculty member with the Program in Women’s Studies (now the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies). She was also a longtime member of the American Philological Association and the Classical Association of the Atlantic States.

Martin is survived by her brother James, her sister Nancy, five nephews and two nieces.

We report with great sadness the death of Professor T. James Luce, on May 29. Luce was a major presence in our department for a generation. 

A native of Elmira, NY, he came to Princeton as a graduate student in 1955 (with a B.A. from Hamilton College), stayed on as Instructor, and remained at Princeton throughout his career. In 1977 he was named Kennedy Foundation Professor of the Latin Language and Literature; he retired in 1995. His 1978 monograph, Livy: The Composition of his History transformed scholarship on this author by demonstrating the planning behind, and sophistication of, his presentation of the Roman past, and his important articles on Roman historiography remain central points of reference decades after their appearance. He was also a generous and genial teacher of Latin, Greek, and Roman History, whose laughter would ring through the department. And his scholarly influence survives also among the many students he trained and inspired. In addition to two terms as Chair, Luce’s service to the university included thirty-two years as Latin scribe, writing the Latin for university degrees and helping salutatorians with their speeches. He is survived by his husband Marvin Mandelbaum and by two siblings, to whom we extend our profound condolences. Jim’s many contributions to the field of classics and to the department will be remembered with joy and gratitude.

John Keaney, an esteemed Greek and Latin scholar who taught in Princeton's Department of Classics for 41 years, died Monday, April 21, after a brief illness. He was 70.

Services will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday, April 24, in the University Chapel, followed by a reception at Maclean House. The burial will be private.

Keaney joined the Princeton faculty as a lecturer in classics in 1959 and remained a key figure in the department until his retirement in 2000. He was a generalist who taught courses on Greek and Latin language and literature, Greek drama, Plato, Aristotle and Homer. Keaney also wrote or edited several books on ancient Greek scholarship.

"He was above all a very devoted and very popular teacher, and at the same time a very serious scholar," said Robert Kaster, chair of the classics department. Kaster added that he has received several notes from former students reminiscing about their classes with Keaney, some from as many as 30 years ago.

"Keaney recognized the importance of retaining close attention to undergraduate education, especially during a period in which advanced study of Greek and Latin was becoming increasingly rare at the preparatory school level," Josiah Ober, a classics professor and former department chair, said at the time of Keaney's retirement.

Keaney played a central role in devising a classics curriculum that allowed Princeton undergraduate students "to move quickly through introductory Greek and Latin to the level at which reading an ancient author becomes a pleasure rather than a chore," Ober said. "His genuine pleasure in teaching the Greek and Latin languages and his dedication to maintaining high standards of undergraduate education in classics have been profoundly appreciated by four decades of Princetonians."

Keaney was promoted to assistant professor in 1963, associate professor in 1970 and professor in 1975. He was the department representative for classics for many years, served as director of graduate studies and was integral in the development of the departmental library.

Keaney was the author of "The Composition of Aristotle's Athenaion Politeia: Observation and Explanation" and "The Lexeis of Harpocration," both published in 1992. Books he edited or co-edited included "(Plutarch) De Homero: Essay on the Life and Poetry of Homer" (1996), "Homer's Ancient Readers" (1992) and "The Greek Prothetic Vowel" (1972).

Keaney also served on several University committees -- including those involving the library, Italian studies and humanistic studies -- and as a member of the Prospect Association Managing Board.

A 1953 graduate of Boston College, Keaney earned a master's in 1955 and a Ph.D. in 1959 from Harvard University.

After his retirement from Princeton, Keaney continued his research on Byzantine manuscripts, a longtime pursuit that involved many trips to the Vatican Library in Rome over the years.

A Princeton resident, Keaney is survived by his wife of 45 years, Toni; daughter Anne, of Princeton; son John Jr. and daughter-in-law Asmira Halim, of Nashville, Tenn.; and son Paul, daughter-in-law Mary Jo Keaney, granddaughter Laura and grandson Paul, of Westborough, Mass.

Elaine Fantham, the Giger Professor of Latin, Emeritus, and professor of classics, emeritus, who was known and admired for her outstanding scholarship and warm friendship, died July 11 of natural causes in Toronto. She was 83.

Fantham joined the Princeton faculty in 1986 and retired in 1999. Her main interests were Roman comedy and rhetoric, Latin epic from Virgil to Statius, Roman religion and the social history of Roman women. She served as chair of the Department of Classics from 1989-93, and from 1996-98 she directed graduate studies as well as the Program in the Ancient World. 

“She was one of the most remarkable Latinists of her generation, with an unmatched range of expertise, and had an enormous impact through her scholarship, teaching and friendship,” said Andrew Feldherr, professor of classics and chair of the Department of Classics.

“Elaine seemed to have had at her instant command everything that could be known about any aspect of Latin literature or Roman life, and an inexhaustible energy for translating that knowledge into scholarship that was as engaging and original as it was authoritative. From her early work on Plautus, she re-drew the map of Latin studies,” Feldherr said.

“She was a pioneer both as a scholar of Roman women and as a woman scholar at times and places where women were scarcely represented in our field,” he said, noting that many students had their first introduction to the lived experience of Roman women through the chapters she wrote for “Women in the Classical World: Image and Text” (Oxford University Press, 1994).

Calling Fantham “forthright and wonderfully entertaining,” Feldherr said that she became a popular commentator for National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition,” drawing parallels between the ancient and contemporary worlds. In 2003, she used that context “to challenge the wisdom (or highlight the folly) of American military engagement in Iraq,” Feldherr said. That particular broadcast garnered the attention of The New York Times, which interviewed Fantham about her admonitions to George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and their advisers, for a 2003.

Robert Kaster, the Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin Language and Literature and professor of classics, said: “Perhaps the most striking thing about Elaine is that she seemed to know everything about classical Latin literature: I couldn’t count the number of times that she produced the most arcane fact or unexpected comparison in a casual conversation, not remotely by way of showing off, but naturally, as though, of course, this was the sort of thing anyone could be expected to know or understand.

“She was also unfailingly kind to friends and always interested in their news or news of their families — she loved the relationships she formed and found in them one of the sources of her remarkable energy,” Kaster said.

Fantham was born in Liverpool, England, in 1933, and lived through the bombing raids of 1939-42 during World War II. She was drawn to the study of classics “when she saw an advertisement for Sanatogen Tonic Wine with a glamorous young man with long hair and a tunic and his equally captivating female companion riding in a chariot past the Acropolis. By the time she understood that ancient Greece was nothing like this, she was thoroughly enamored with the subject.”

She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Oxford University and her Ph.D. at the University of Liverpool in 1962. Before coming to Princeton, she taught for two years at the University of Indiana, then moved to Canada, where she was a member of the faculty at the University of Toronto from 1968 to 1986.

Her publications include “Roman Literary Culture: From Cicero to Apuleius” (1996), “Women in the Classical World: Image and Text” (1994, with H. Foley et al.) and “Studies in Republican Latin Imagery (1972),” as well as commentaries on Seneca’s “Troades,” Lucan’s “Civil War” and Ovid’s “Fasti.” She was coeditor and translator of “Erasmus: The Educational and Literary Works” (1989) and served as associate editor-in-chief of the seven-volume “Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome” (2010).

At Princeton, she taught a wide range of courses, including graduate courses on Roman epic, undergraduate courses on the Aeneid and seminars on a range of topics including Roman religion. Many of her advisees have gone on to become leaders in the field, Feldherr said.

“Elaine was a phenomenal mentor who did not just advise her students on their scholarly work, but also opened her house to them and became their friend,” said Katharina Volk, who earned her doctorate in classics in 1999 and is a professor of classics at Columbia University.

“Her Christmas parties, to which all classics graduate students were invited, were legendary and traditionally featured large bowls of pasta, large quantities of wine and a ‘secret Santa,‘” Volk said. “One year, she brought along a new translation of Plautus’ comedy ‘Pseudolus’ and assigned roles to everyone for a semi-staged reading. It was a memorable night.”

Stephen Wheeler, an associate professor of classics at Penn State University, earned his Ph.D. in classics at Princeton in 1992 and often visited Fantham in Toronto after she retired.

“What I have always valued in Elaine was her brilliant command of Latin texts and her sound opinion about them,” Wheeler said. “The range of her knowledge on all things classical was immense and could be intimidating to students, but she was able to put us at ease and win our love with her earthy wit and unfailing generosity.”

He recalled his last visit, at Easter in 2015, accompanied by his wife and children. “We had a lovely lunch and afternoon in her home, which included all the attractions of a do-it-yourself Plautine comedy — a strange assortment of delicacies and fast-paced verbal exchange,” he said. “We will all miss her.”

A former trustee of the American Academy in Rome, Fantham served as vice president of the Classical Association of Canada (CAC) from 1982-84 and, after her retirement, as honorary president from 2001-06. She received the CAC Award of Merit in 2015. Fantham was president of the American Philological Association in 2004, which awarded her a Distinguished Service Medal in 2009.

She was married to Peter Fantham, a mathematician, now deceased, and is survived by their daughter, Julia, and son, Roy, and their families.

Samuel Atkins, professor emeritus of classics at Princeton University, died March 20 at the age of 91 in California. Atkins, who served on Princeton’s faculty since 1937, died of kidney failure.

The emeritus Professor of Classics on the Andrew Fleming West Foundation, Atkins was an expert in Vedic philology and Indo-European linguistics. He served as chair of the classics department from 1961 to 1978. His areas of interest included Hellenistic literature, Greek and literary criticism of Greek and Latin texts, and he also taught Sanskrit in the East Asian studies department.

Born in Madison, NJ, Atkins attended Princeton as an undergraduate and was awarded the George Wood Legacy Prize, presented for academic excellence during the junior year. He graduated in 1931, and went on to earn a Ph.D. degree from Princeton in Oriental studies in 1935.

After spending two years as an assistant professor at Baylor University, Atkins returned to Princeton as an instructor in 1937. His teaching career was interrupted twice by wartime duty with the Armed Forces. From March 1942 until June 1946, he was a communications specialist with the Navy and returned to civilian life with the rank of lieutenant commander. With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, he was recalled by the Navy and served for 17 months. He was appointed Professor of Classics on the Andrew Fleming West Foundation in 1962.

Atkins published “Pusan in the Rig-Veda” in 1941. He also was a regular contributor of reviews and articles to the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Language, Classical Weekly and the Journal of English and Germanic Philology.

In 1959, Atkins spent a year in Thailand as a Fulbright Research Scholar studying the application of the principles of modern linguistics to the teaching of English as a second language. He was active in the American Philological Association, heading the organization’s Committee on Educational Training and Trends.

Atkins transferred to emeritus status in 1978 and subsequently moved to Pomona, Calif. He is survived by his wife, Jeannette; his three children, Samuel Atkins Jr., Bowman Atkins and Pamela Ibrahim, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.