To mark the return of the Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures to Rome this December, to be given by Rubina Raja starting today and continuing into next week, we are looking back at the history of the series at the American Academy in Rome.
Born in 1864 to a prominent Michigan family, Thomas Spencer Jerome was a successful lawyer and Roman history enthusiast. In 1899, pushed into an early retirement at the advice of his physicians, Jerome moved to the Italian island of Capri where he spent his later years devoted to research, amassing an impressive library and producing several of his own volumes on classical history. He visited the Academy in 1911 and gave a lecture on Emperor Tiberius. Upon his death in 1914, his library was divided between the Academy, his social clubs in Michigan, and the University of Michigan, his alma mater.
“These books have unique associations,” wrote Academy Librarian Albert Van Buren in the 1915 Annual Report, “they represent the life-interests of a remarkable man, who devoted himself unsparingly for many years, even until his death, to the study and elucidation of the great questions connected with the development and decay of human life and institutions in Italy…. There never was a more devoted American citizen than the Capri historian; and his treatment of ancient Rome was constantly illuminated by the results of his experience and observation in America, and constantly directed by his desire to extract from the past lessons that might prove of utility for the future.”
In addition to his books, Jerome left an endowment for the lectureship bearing his name, jointly administered and hosted by the American Academy in Rome and the University of Michigan. Jerome outlined a few topics he envisioned this lecture series encompassing:
“1. The conditions, circumstances or causes or some one or more of them affecting or determining the rise or decline of peoples, nations or civilizations;
2. The application of the results attained in biological and psychological sciences to the elucidation of historical problems;
3. The light thrown by the history of ancient peoples upon modern political, economic or social problems;
4. Some element or aspect of the history, institutions or civilization of the ancient Romans, or of the peoples embraced in the ancient Roman Republic or Empire;
5. The scientific criticism of historical material, the weighing of historical evidence or historical methodology.”
In 1929, University of Michigan Professor John Garret Winter gave the first Jerome Lecture titled “Life and Letters in the Papyri.” Following Winter, the lectures were paused due to the Great Depression and World War II, recommencing in 1948 with Allan C. Johnson and “Egypt and the Roman Empire.” The Jerome Lectureship has become influential in the fields of classics and archaeology, its recipient list a who’s-who of preeminent scholars.
A full chronological list of all lectures continues below.
1929–30
John Garrett Winter, “Life and Letters in the Papyri”
1948
Alan Chester Johnson, “Egypt and the Roman Empire”
1951
Arthur E. R. Boak, “Manpower in the Western Roman Empire”
1952
Gisela M. Richter, “Ancient Italy, Its Arts and Peoples”
1953
Axel Boëthius, “Aspects of Roman Architecture and Archaeology”
1956
William Bell Dinsmoor, “Greek Architecture in Ancient Italy”
1958
Sir Frank E. Adcock “Roman Political Ideas and Practice”
1960
Richard Krautheimer, “Christian Architecture in the Roman Empire”
1961
Andrew Alföldi, “Early Rome and the Latins”
1964
Lily Ross Taylor, “The Roman Assemblies from the Hannibalic War to the Dictatorship of Caesar”
1966–67
Erik Sjöqvist, “Sicily and the Greeks: Studies in the Interrelationship between the Indigenous Populations and the Greek Colonists”
1967–68
Massimo Pallottino, “Sketches of a History of Ancient Italy before Its Romanization”
1969
John Ward-Perkins, “Men, Methods and Materials: Some Practical Aspects of Roman Architecture and Sculpture”
1972
George M. A. Hanfmann, “From Croesus to Constantine: The Cities of Western Asia Minor and Their Arts in Greco-Roman Times”
1973
Arnaldo Dante Momigliano, “Freedom of Speech and Religious Freedom in the Ancient World”
1974
Jacqueline De Romilly, “The Rise and Fall of States According to Greek”
1976
Cornelius Clarson Vermeule III, “Crime and Punishment in Antiquity”
1977
Frank E. Brown, “Cosa: The Making of a Roman Town”
1978
Mario Torelli, “Roman Historical Reliefs: The Structure and Shaping of Ancient Attitudes”
1982
Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, “Roman Copies of Greek Sculptures: The Problem of the Originals”
1984
Paul Zanker, “A Cultural Program for the Roman Empire: Art and Architecture in the Augustan Age”
1985
Emilio Gabba, “Antiquity in the Historical and Political Reflections of the Eighteenth Century”
1986
Irving Lavin, “The Art of Commemoration in the Renaissance”
1987
Claude Nicolet, “The Roman Empire: Space, Time and Politics”
1988
Glen Warren Bowersock, “Hellenism in Late Antiquity”
1989
R. Martin Harrison, “Mountain and Plain: from the Lycian Coast to the Phrygian Plateau, in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Period”
1990
David Ridgway, “The Prehistorical and Archaic Mediterranean: Before Demaratus”
1991–92
Anthony Grafton, “How the Humanists Read the Classics: Four Studies”
1993–94
Fergus G. B. Miller, “The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic”
1996
Jaroslav Pelikan, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? The Counterpoint between Timaeus and Genesis from Classical Rome to Catholic Rome”
1998
Nicholas Purcell, “The Capitoline Ideology”
2000–1
Joseph C. Carter, “Discovering the Greek Countryside at Metaponto”
2001–2
Tonio Hölscher, “Public Monuments in Ancient Greece and Rome”
2002–3
Alessandro Barchiesi, “Copies Without Models: Hellenization and Augustan Poetry”
2004
John A. Pinto, “Speaking Ruins: Piranesi, Architects and Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century Rome”
2006–7
Larissa Bonfante, “Images and Translations: Greek, Etruscan and Beyond”
2008
Maud Gleason, “Transformation: Fears and Fantasies in the Roman Empire”
2009
Henner von Hesberg, “Roman Imperialism and the Power of the Media”
2010
Kathleen Coleman, “Q. Sulpicius Maximus, Poet, Eleven Years Old”
2011
Leonard Barkan, “Unswept Floor: Food Culture and High Culture; Antiquity and Renaissance”
2013
David Mattingly, “Africa under Rome: Relationships, Identities and Cultural Trajectories”
2014
Aldo Schiavone, “Ancient and Modern Equality”
2015
Maria Wyke, “Ancient Rome in Silent Cinema”
2016
Maurizio Bettini, “The Invention of a Roman God: Anthropology and Roman Religion”
2018
Robin Lane Fox, “The Natural World: Pagans and Christians”
2022
Amy Richlin, “Dirty Words: The Selective Survival of Latin Erotica”
2024
Rubina Raja, “Contextualizing Roman Ruins: Urban Cultures of Antiquity and the Long Late Antiquity in the Near East”
