Professor Peter Garnsey

Emeritus Fellow
University Positions
Director of Research
Subjects
Specialising in
History of Classical Antiquity

Peter Garnsey is an Emeritus Fellow at Jesus College specialising in Greek and Roman Ancient History, Legal History and Philosophy.

Academic interests

Peter Garnsey's current research projects include:

  • History of ideas, with special reference to theories of property, from antiquity to the 19th century
  • Diet, nutrition, and health of past populations through the study of human skeletal remains, with special reference to ancient Rome and Italy
  • The history of late antiquity
  • History of ideas, with special reference to the debate over capital punishment.

Degrees obtained

  • MA, Sydney.
  • MA, DPhil, Oxford.

Other interests

The culture of Italy and France, music, sport, yoga.

Publications, links and resources

  • Against the Death Penalty: Writings from the First Abolitionists, Giuseppe Pelli and Cesare Beccaria, Princeton 2020.
  • Thinking About Property, From Antiquity to the Age of Revolution, Cambridge 2007.
  • Lactantius, Divine Institutes. Introd/Transl./Notes, Liverpool 2003 (co author).
  • Evolution of the Late Antique World, Cambridge 2001 (co author).
  • Food and Society in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge 1999.
  • Cities, Peasants and Food, Cambridge 1998.
  • Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine, Cambridge 1996.
  • Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World, Cambridge 1988.
  • The Roman Empire: Society, Economy and Culture, London 1987 (co author).
  • Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire, Oxford, 1970.
  • Cambridge Ancient History, co editor vols. XI (2000), XII (2005), XIII (1998).

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