Taylor, Lily Ross

Taylor, Lily Ross

(1886–1969) classicist, ancient historian; born in Auburn, Ala. A student of Tenney Frank, she spent most of her teaching career at Bryn Mawr (1927–52). Both her teaching and her scholarship received many honors; Life magazine cited her as one of the country's great teachers, and her Voting Districts of the Roman Republic (1962) won the Goodwin Award of the American Philological Association. Her seven books and more than 70 articles focused on Roman politics and political institutions, including the cults of Ostia and Etruria. Her Divinity of the Roman Empire (1931) was the first extensive study of that subject and remains a classic. At the time of her death in a car accident at age 83, she was working on a study of the Roman Senate.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.