Michael Grant (classicist)

For other authors of the same name, see Michael Grant (disambiguation).

Michael Grant CBE (21 November 1914 – 4 October 2004) was an English classicist, numismatist and author of numerous popular books on ancient history. He described himself as "one of the very few freelances in the field of ancient history: a rare phenomenon".

Biography

Michael Grant was born in London, and read classics at Trinity College, Cambridge and was professor of Humanity at Edinburgh University. He was awarded the OBE in 1946, the CBE in 1958, and was vice-chancellor (president) of the Queen's University of Belfast and University of Khartoum. According to his obituary in The Times he was "one of the few classical historians to win respect from [both] academics and a lay readership". Immensely prolific, he wrote and edited more than 150 books of nonfiction and translation, covering topics from Roman coinage and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius to the Gospels and Jesus. His translation of Tacitus' Annales was published in 1956.

Grant's autobiography, My First Eighty Years, appeared in 1994.

Bibliography

Original works

• From Imperium to Auctoritas (1946/Rev ed, 1971), Treatise on bronze coins
• Ancient History (1952)
• Roman Imperial Money (1954)
• Roman History from Coins (1958/ Rev ed, 1968)
• The World of Rome (1960/ Rev ed, 19??/1974/1987)
• The Ancient Mediterranean (1961/ Rev ed, 1969)
• Myths of the Greeks and Romans (1962/new biblio:1986) ISBN 0-452-01162-0
• Greece and Rome: The Birth of Western Civilization (1964/ Rev ed, 1986)
• The Civilizations of Europe (1965)
• The Gladiators (1967)
• The Climax of Rome: The Final Achievements of the Ancient World, AD 161-337 (1968/ Rev ed, 19??/1974)
• Roman History from Coins (1968), Cambridge University Press
• Julius Caesar (1969)
• The Ancient Historians (1970)
• The Roman Forum (1970)
• Nero (1970)
• Herod the Great (1971)
• Roman Myths (1971)
• Cities of Vesuvius: Pompeii and Herculaneum (1971)
• Atlas of Classical History (1971/ Rev ed, 1974/1986/1989/1994) [AKA Ancient History Atlas]
• Cleopatra (1972), Weidenfeld and Nicholson
• The Jews in the Roman World (1973/ Rev ed, 1984) [AKA *The Jews and the Roman World]
• Who's Who in Classical Mythology, with John Hazel (1973, slightly revised 1993 & 2002)
• Caesar (1974), introduction by Elizabeth Longford (Reprint of 1969 book?)
• Army of the Caesars (1974)
• Cities of Vesuvius: Pompeii and Herculaneum (1974)
• The Twelve Caesars (1975)
• The Fall of the Roman Empire (1976/ Rev ed, 1990) ISBN 0-02-028560-4
• Paul (1976)
• Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (1977)
• History of Rome (1978) ISBN 0-02-345610-8 ISBN 978-0-571-11461-0
• Greece and Italy in the Classical World (1978/ Rev ed, 19??)
• The Art and Life of Pompeii and Herculaneum (1979)
• The Etruscans (1980)
• Greek and Latin Authors: 800 BC - AD 1000 (1980)
• Dawn of the Middle Ages (1981) -- coffee table book
• From Alexander to Cleopatra: the Hellenistic World (1982) [AKA The Hellenistic Greeks (1990)]
• The History of Ancient Israel (1984)
• The Roman Emperors: A Biographical Guide to the Rulers of Imperial Rome 31BC - 476 AD (1985)
• A Guide to the Ancient World: A Dictionary of Classical Place Names (1986)
• The Rise of the Greeks (1987)
• The Classical Greeks (1989)
• The Visible Past: Greek and Roman History from Archaeology, 1960-1990 (1990) [AKA The Visible Past: An Archaeological Reinterpretation of Ancient History]
• Founders of the Western World: A History of Greece and Rome (1991) [AKA A Short History of Classical Civilization]
• Greeks and Romans: A Social History (1992) [ AKA A Social History of Greece and Rome]
• The Emperor Constantine (1993) [AKA Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times (1994)]
• The Antonines: The Roman Empire in Transition (1994)
• St Peter: A Biography (1994)
• My First Eighty Years (1994), Autobiography
• The Sayings of the Bible (1994), Duckworth Sayings Series
• Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation (1995)
• Art in the Roman Empire (1995)
• The Severans: The Changed Roman Empire (1996)
• From Rome to Byzantium: The Fifth Century (1998)
• Sick Caesars (2000)

Translations

• Cicero, Selected Works (1965)
• Cicero, Selected Political Speeches (1969)
• Cicero, Murder Trials (1975)
• Cicero, Cicero on the Good Life (1971)
• Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome (1956/ Rev ed, 1977)
• Cicero, On Government (1993)

Editor/Reviser

• Roman Readings (1958/67) [AKA Latin Literature: An Anthology (1979/new biblio 1989)]
• Roman Literature (19??/ Rev ed, 19??/1964)
• Greek Literature (19??)
• Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars: An Illustrated Edition (1979; Revision of Robert Graves' 1957 translation)
• Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean (with R. Kitzinger, 1988)
• The Golden Ass (1990; Revision of Robert Graves' 1950 translation)
• Readings in the Classical Historians (1992)

External links

• A more extensive bibliography of Michael Grant's works