Richard Talbert

Richard Talbert
Richard John Alexander Talbert (born 26 April 1947) is a British-American contemporary ancient historian and classicist on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor of History and is currently Research
Professor in charge of the Ancient World Mapping Center. Talbert is a leading scholar of ancient geography and ideas of space in the ancient Mediterranean world.
Education
Talbert received his education at The King's School, Canterbury and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he gained Double First Class Honours in Classics (1968), followed by a PhD (1972) directed by F.H. Sandbach and M.I. Finley.
Career
Talbert was on the faculty of the Queen’s University, Belfast (assistant to senior lecturer) from 1970 to 1985. After publishing Timoleon and the Revival of Greek Sicily (1974), he extended his research into Roman history and produced The Senate of Imperial Rome (1984). By examining the workings of the institution for the first time, this book revises the longstanding assumption that the senate during the Principate barely retained a meaningful role. The book won the American Philological Association’s Goodwin Award of Merit (1987). In 1978-79 Talbert was Herodotus Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. In 1985 he became professor of history at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. A basic Atlas of Classical History edited by him appeared in 1985 (revised edition 2023), followed by a Penguin Classic Plutarch on Sparta in 1988 (expanded 2005).
In 1988 Talbert moved to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and accepted a commission from the American Philological Association to produce the first major classical atlas since the 1870s. The planning and progress of this international collaborative effort are a key theme in his book Challenges of Mapping the Classical World (2019). The resulting Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World and Map-by-Map Directory were published in 2000. Around 200 scholars were involved, and over $4.5 million in funding was raised. Talbert then established and created an endowment for, the Ancient World Mapping Center at UNC Chapel Hill. It has continued to take the lead in exploiting digital technology to launch a wide range of initiatives, in particular the Pleiades gazetteer.
A monograph by Talbert (2010), accompanied by extensive web materials, offers fresh thinking about the design and purpose of the Tabula Peutingeriana, the one surviving large Roman map (in a medieval copy). Worldview is again the focus of his further monograph (2017) on a neglected type of portable sundial, one incorporating a list of cities and regions with their latitude figures (in Greek or Latin). The collection World and Hour in Roman Minds (2023) assembles many of Talbert’s shorter contributions in this field. In addition, he has (co-)edited numerous volumes relating to space, travel, and communication not only in classical antiquity but also in other cultures worldwide at different periods. His translation (with Brian Turner, 2022) Pliny the Elder’s World spans the Natural History’s description of the universe and the Earth.
For students at the survey level, Talbert collaborated with Mary Boatwright and Daniel Gargola (and later Noel Lenski) on The Romans: From Village to Empire (2004, revised 2012), and on its abridgment A Brief History of the Romans (2006, revised 2014). For college faculty, Talbert co-directed (with Michael Maas) several National Endowment for the Humanities summer Institutes and Seminars at both UNC Chapel Hill and the American Academy in Rome. As visiting professor, Talbert taught at the University of Alabama, Huntsville (1993), at Princeton University (1997), and at Whitman College, WA (2021); also in Paris at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (2011) and Ecole Normale Supérieure (2019), and at the Université de Reims (2013). He has been a resident professor at the American Academy in Rome (1991). He organized the 2007 Nebenzahl Lectures at the Newberry Library, Chicago, was 2017 Eitner lecturer (Stanford University), and lecturer for the Guangqi International Center, Shanghai, China (2018).
Talbert was leading co-editor of the University of North Carolina Press series Studies in the History of Greece and Rome (1995-2017). As American Journal of Philology’s associate editor for ancient history, he co-edited two special issues: Classical Courts and Courtiers (2011), and Moses Finley in America (2014). He co-presented the virtual exhibition Late Ottoman Turkey in Princeton’s Forgotten Maps, 1883-1923 (2022-2023).
Talbert has served on the Council of the Classical Association of Canada, as president of the Association of Ancient Historians (1999-2002), and as chair of the American Academy in Rome’s School of Classical Studies Advisory Council (2006-2012). He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies Senior Fellowship, Harley Research Fellowship, and Goheen Fellowship at the National Humanities Center. He was awarded the American Philological Association’s Medal for Distinguished Service in 1999. Cambridge conferred on him its Doctorate of Letters (2003), and he is a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute (2005). A Festschrift was presented to him in 2014.
Talbert has trained many ancient historians during his tenure at the University of North Carolina.
Selected publications
Monographs and Related Contributions
1971. Studies on Timoleon and the revival of Greek Sicily from 344 to 317 B.C. (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge. Faculty of Classics)
1974. Timoleon and the Revival of Greek Sicily (Cambridge University Press) .
1984. The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton University Press). . 罗马帝国的元老院 / Luoma di guo de yuan lao yuan Chinese edition 2018 (Shanghai: East China Normal University Press)
1989. “The role of the helots in the class struggle at Sparta,” Historia 38: 22-40 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4436088
1997. “The Greeks in Sicily and South Italy,” 137-65 in L.A. Tritle. ed., The Greek World in the Fourth Century (Routledge)
1999. “Tacitus and the Senatus Consultum de Pisone Patre,” American Journal of Philology vol. 120.1: 89-97. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1561712
2009. “Senate, Roman,” 209-13 in S.N. Katz, ed., The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History, vol. 5
2010. Rome's World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered (Cambridge University Press). ; online content. BMCR 2012.04.14; TLS;JRA 24.831; Elijah Meeks.
2014. [Festschrift]. L.L. Brice and Daniëlle Slootjes. Edd. Aspects of Ancient Institutions and Geography: Studies in Honor of Richard J.A. Talbert. Leiden: E. J. Brill. . (with cumulative bibliography, 12-25) Ancient History Bulletin 2015
2017. Roman Portable Sundials: The Empire in Your Hand. (Oxford University Press).
2022. with Brian Turner. trans. Pliny the Elder’s World: Natural History, Books 2-6 (Cambridge University Press)
2023. World and Hour in Roman Minds: Exploratory Essays Oxford University Press.
Edited volumes
1985. Atlas of Classical History (Croom Helm, later Routledge). . Japanese edition 1996. Girishia rōma rekishi chizu ギリシア。ローマ歴史地図 / Richiādo·J·A·Tarubāto hen ; Nonaka Natsumi, Oda Kenji yaku./リチァード·J·A·タルバート編 ; 野中夏実, 小田謙爾訳.
2000. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton University Press, 2000). . Reviews: Journal of Roman Archaeology 14.454; Athena Review 2.4 ; JRS 94 (2004): 183–90; additional reviews. 2013 app version.
2004. with Kai Brodersen. Space in the Roman World, its Perception and Presentation (LIT, Munster). . Reviews: BMCR 2005.09.41
2004. with M.T. Boatwright and D. Gargola. The Romans: From Village to Empire (Oxford University Press). . Review: BMCR 2006.04.29. Czech edition (2012). Dějiny římské rise: od nejranějších časů po Konstantina Velikého .
2005. trans. Plutarch on Sparta new ed. .
2006. with M.T. Boatwright and D. Gargola. A Brief History of the Romans (Oxford University Press). .
2008. with R.W. Unger Cartography in antiquity and the Middle Ages: fresh perspectives, new methods (Brill). . Reviews: BMCR 2009.06.07.
2010. with Kurt A. Raaflaub.Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies (Wiley-Blackwell). . Reviews: Journal of Roman Archaeology 25.763.
2011. with David S. Potter.
2012. with M.T. Boatwright, N. Lenski and D. Gargola The Romans: From Village to Empire: A History of Rome from Earliest Times to the End of the Western Empire 2nd expanded edition (Oxford University Press). .
2012. with Susan E. Alcock and John P. Bodel. Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World. (Wiley-Blackwell). .
2012. Ancient Perspectives: Maps and Their Place in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. (University of Chicago Press). . Reviews: BMCR 2013.10.63; AJA 117.4 (2013)
2013. New introduction to re-print of William Smith. An atlas of ancient geography, biblical and classical: maps of the ancient world. London: I. B. Tauris. .
2013. Boatwright, M. T., D. J. Gargola, N. Lenski, and R. Talbert. A Brief History of the Romans. Second Edition. Oxford University Press.
2014. with F. S. Naiden.
2017. with F.S. Naiden. Mercury's Wings: Exploring Modes of Communication in the Ancient World. (Oxford University Press). .
2019. Challenges of Mapping the Classical World Routledge.
2023. with Lindsay Holman and Benet Salway. Atlas of Classical History Revised edition. Routledge
Maps
2011. ed. Routledge Wall Maps for the Ancient World (7 maps).
ed. Maps for Texts series.
Internet resources
2012. "Maps" for Oxford Bibliographies Online: Classics.
2022-23. Late Ottoman Turkey in Princeton’s Forgotten Maps, 1883-1923 virtual exhibition
References
External links
Ancient World Mapping Center
Faculty profile
English historians
English classical scholars
Historians of antiquity
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty
Place of birth missing (living people)
1947 births
Living people
Classical scholars of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill