Edward J. Watts

Professor Watts received his PhD in History from Yale University in 2002. His research interests center on the intellectual and religious history of the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire. His first book, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (University of California Press, 2006), explains how the increasingly Christian upper class of the late antique world used a combination of economic and political pressures to neutralize pagan elements of the traditional educational system. City and School received the Outstanding Publication Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in 2007. His second book, Riot in Alexandria: Historical Debate in Pagan and Christian Communities (University of California Press, 2010), uses Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac sources to reconstruct an Alexandrian riot that erupted in 486 AD. Riot received a 2010 PROSE Award Honorable Mention in Classics and Ancient History. His third book, The Final Pagan Generation (University of California Press, 2015) offers a generational history of the men born in the 310s that traces the experience of living through the fourth century’s dramatic religious and political changes. It was awarded the 2015 Phi Alpha Theta Best Subsequent Book Prize. His fourth book, Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (Oxford University Press, 2017) recounts the life of an important female philosopher whose work redefined philosophy and whose death resonated as a symbol of dramatic religious and social change in the early fifth century. He is also the author of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny (Basic Books, 2018).