Kyle Harper

Kyle Harper (Ph.D., Harvard University) is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. His most recent books are The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (Princeton University Press, 2017) and Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History (Princeton University Press, 2021).

Can you think of a particular work of art that illustrates or is somehow relevant to your area of research? 

We don’t have very much visual art that represents plagues or epidemics in the Roman period. However, we do have a lot of literary evidence. In fact the very first scene of the earliest “classical” text- Homer’s Iliad – is a plague scene! And it just keeps on going, through Sophocles and Thucydides to Lucretius and Vergil, right down to the end of antiquity.

Who is the best teacher you’ve ever had? 

Easily my ancient history professor at the University of Oklahoma, Rufus Fears. He was a legendary teacher – truly a gifted lecturer with a lot of charisma who made history come to life and seem urgently relevant. I took all of his courses and it quite literally changed my life, since I would never have become a Roman historian without his influence.

If you could decree that all students of the classics read one book or article, what would it be?

Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall, of course! After more than two centuries, it is still a monument of historical narrative, as beautiful as it is insightful.

 

François Perrier, La Peste d’Athènes (ca. 1640)