John Matthews

John Matthews was born and spent his early years in Leicester, UK, and has lived

in New Haven since he joined the Yale faculty in 1996. This was after a long

career at Oxford University, where he studied Greek and Roman literature and

history, and where he was awarded his D.Phil. At Oxford he was successively

University Lecturer, Reader and ad hominem professor, and was Fellow of

Queen’s College. He is now John M. Schiff Emeritus Professor in the

Departments of Classics and History of Yale, having retired in 2014. Apart from

his teaching in the two universities, he is the author of several books and many

research articles on the cultural and social history of the Roman Empire,

especially in its later period. His most recent book appeared earlier this year, and

he is currently in the final stages of completing a book on the early history of

Constantinople. He is Fellow of the British Academy, of the London Society of

Antiquaries, and of the Royal Historical Society, and holds the honorary degree of

D.Litt. from Leicester University. His interest in music began in his early years at

Leicester and was pursued in Oxford, where he was an active member of the

music scene. High points of his performance history include a school

performance of Milhaud’s Scaramouche for two pianos, and a performance at

Oxford of Book II of Janacek’s On an Overgrown Path (which he remembers as

being announced as On an Undergrown Path), and he was a répétiteur for a

production of Britten’s Turn of the Screw. He is still a persistent but dissatisfied

amateur pianist, with an annoying habit, to himself at least, of attempting music

that he cannot quite handle in the time that he is able to give to it.