Susan Treggiari


Susan Treggiari is an English scholar of Ancient Rome, emeritus professor of Stanford University and retired member of the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford. Her specialist areas of study are the family and marriage in ancient Rome, Cicero and the late Roman Republic.

Education

Treggiari was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College, where she studied Latin from eleven and Greek from twelve. She studied Literae Humaniores at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1958–62, for which she was awarded a first, remaining for a further two years and writing a thesis supervised by P.A. Brunt, on Roman freedmen during the late Republic. She held a Derby Scholarship for travel in Italy 1962–63 and was awarded an M.A. in 1965 and a B.Litt. in 1967. Her D.Litt. was awarded by Oxford in 1993.

Career

Treggiari started teaching at various institutions in London from 1964, including Goldsmiths’ College and the North-Western Polytechnic. She then taught at the University of Ottawa 1970–82 and at Stanford 1982–2001, where she was Anne T. & Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences from 1992.
In 1993 she was awarded the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit of the American Philological Association. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1995, and has also held the following fellowships:
She is a general editor of the Clarendon Press Ancient History Series, has been Joint Editor of Classical News and Views /Echos du monde classique, President of the Association of Ancient Historians and of the American Philological Association. She is a founding member of the Institute for Digital Archaeology Women in Classics Series and with Dr. Miriam Griffin co-hosted the inaugural Women in Classics Dinner at Somerville College, Oxford. She is also a consultant on the Oxford English Dictionary.

Critical reception

Her work Roman Marriage. Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the time of Ulpian, was reviewed in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, which said: "Susan Treggiari, with her superb command of the literary and legal sources, now offers us a grand vision of attitudes towards marriage in law and practice among the upper classes. Her inspiration is Crook's Law and Life of Rome 90 B.C.-A.D. 212, and her intention is to describe the institution of marriage at Rome. The result is a massive book that draws together an enormous amount of information from legal sources as well as from literary and epigraphic quarters. The excellent index and clear sign-posting within chapters will make this a book that all teaching Roman social history will want."
A similarly favorable review was published in Classical Philology, which said: "it is indispensable to all scholars who have any interest whatsoever in Roman marriage. In many respects, T.'s study is a counterpart to P. E. Corbett's The Roman Law of Marriage, one of the few standard Roman law treatises that is also in English. But while T. does not avoid discussing legal sources, her concern is more with the social institution of marriage, and with what might be called its cultural dynamics as they emerge especially from literary and legal sources."
A review in Bryn Mawr Classical Review of Terentia, Tullia and Publilia. The women of Cicero’s family concluded: "This will be an extremely useful book for teachers and students taking courses about Roman women. Little previous knowledge is expected from readers, and short introductory sections provide basic information about Roman politics, law and society. It is difficult to say anything new about evidence which is generally well-known and thoroughly discussed, but having it all summarised in one place for the first time is in itself very helpful, and serves its avowed purpose of leaving readers to make up their own minds. Everything is presented in a clear and lucid style with a careful avoidance of going beyond what the sources can support."

Works

Books

Articles on Roman history in journals and books

II Short articles in conference proceedings etc.