John F. Matthews

John M. Schiff Professor of Classics and Roman History

John Matthews, M.A. and D. Phil University of Oxford, faculty member at Yale since 1996, you came to Yale after a long career at having spent his earlier career at Oxford, where you were University Professor of Late Roman History, and Fellow and Tutor at Queen’s College– and we at Yale have never stopped congratulating ourselves that we got you.

You are rightly regarded as a champion of the traditional Classicist method of argument. Your work is anchored in the ancient texts themselves, which you have applied especially to social and cultural history, with great erudition, inviting readers into a detailed, intimate, sympathetic understanding of the ruling class. You arrived at Yale having achieved the highest distinction for your scholarship, earned in particular by your two formidable works on later Roman history, underpinned by shorter pieces gathered into a third volume. To these you added a collaborative history text for undergraduates and translated into no less than nine languages. After coming to Yale, your publication opened up two quite different areas within the same period of history, late Roman. With one of these studies you received an award from the American Historical Association for the best book of the year given to a period of the past further back than the year 1000. 

You are a first rank scholar. Yet while keeping your distinguished research and publication very much alive, you nevertheless did yeoman’s administrative service for Yale. For seven and a half years you served as chair of Classics, and your service was the more important because it came at a moment of great transition for the department and required many searches and new appointments. Perhaps you were called upon to do this because, John Matthews, you are just so well liked. Fair minded, easy of smile, graceful and kind to all, It would be hard to find someone held in more grateful and affectionate esteem than you. On your retirement, your colleagues fondly wish you “Ave atque vale.”

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans