Ernst Badian
Ernst Badian was an Austrian-born classical scholar who served as a professor at Harvard University from 1971 to 1998.Biography
Born in Vienna in 1925, in 1938 he fled Nazi Europe with his family to New Zealand. There he attended University of Canterbury, where he met his future wife Nathlie Ann Wimsett, receiving a B.A. in 1945 and an M.A. the following year. After a year teaching at Victoria University of Wellington, he went to University College, Oxford, studying under George Cawkwell and getting a B.A. in 1950, an M.A. in 1954, and D. Phil. in 1956. In addition, he took a Litt. D. from New Zealand's Victoria University of Wellington in 1962.
After teaching in the universities of Sheffield, Durham, and Leeds in Britain, and at the State University of New York, Buffalo, he was appointed to Harvard’s Department of History in 1971, and was cross-appointed to the Department of the Classics in 1973. He became John Moors Cabot Professor of History Emeritus in 1998.
Badian was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974. An active promoter of classical studies in the United States, he helped found The American Journal of Ancient History, the Association of Ancient Historians, and the New England Ancient History Colloquium.
In 1999 Austria awarded him the Cross of Honor for Science and Art.
Badian died at the age of 85 after a fall in his Quincy, Massachusetts, home. He was survived by his widow Nathlie, his children Hugh and Rosemary, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Legacy
The Ernst Badian Collection of Roman Republican Coins is housed by the Special Collections and University Archives of the Rutgers University libraries.
At the 2012 meeting of the Association of Ancient Historians in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, ancient historians T. Corey Brennan and Jerzy Linderski delivered papers reflecting on the historical methodologies employed by Badian.Works
- Foreign Clientelae 264–70 B.C.
- Studies in Greek and Roman History
- "The Early Historians", in Thomas Allen Dorey, Latin Historians pp. 1–38.
- Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic, 2nd ed.
- Publicans and Sinners
- From Plataea to Potidaea
- Zöllner und Sünder
Editor for:
- Ancient Society and Institutions. Studies Presented to Victor Ehrenberg
- Polybius. Selected passages in translation
- Sir Ronald Syme, Roman Papers
- Translated Documents of Greek and Rome, vols. 1, 2, 3, edited jointly with Robert K. Sherk
