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.^[1]

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.^[2] It has continued to take the lead in exploiting digital technology to launch a wide range of initiatives, in particular the Pleiades gazetteer.^[3]

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.^[4]

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 the 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,^[5] 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.^[6]

Talbert has trained many ancient historians during his tenure at the University of North Carolina.

Selected publications

References

External links

• Ancient World Mapping Center
• Faculty profile