Ted Champlin
Edward Champlin, eminent Roman history scholar and ‘powerful mentor,’ dies at 76
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.”
‘A prince amongst the modern historians of the Roman empire’
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.
Bringing ‘insight and wit’ to the lecture hall
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. who also teaches at Johns Hopkins University’s Program in Global Security Studies and 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.
Donations in Champlin’s honor may be made to Doctors Without Borders.
View or share comments on a memorial page intended to honor Champlin’s life and legacy.