Philip A. Stadter
November 29, 1936 – February 11, 2021
In Memoriam
From 1962 to 2003, Philip Austin Stadter trained generations of students at the University of North Carolina in the fine art of reading manuscripts and the depth of learning in Plutarch’s Lives. A graduate of Princeton, Philip wrote his Harvard dissertation on Plutarch under the eminent historian Herbert Bloch and though he wrote important articles on Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and even some Romans like Horace, Livy, Pliny, and Plautus, the Greek historians of the Roman period remained his scholarly passion throughout his career. His work on Arrian is standard and his commentary on Plutarch’s Life of Pericles is essentially a multifaceted history of the Athenian Golden Age. Philip had a fine ear for stylistic and linguistic nuance, which he often passed over to make what was to him a more important historical observation. The book also embodies its author’s ability, often displayed in the classroom, to enlighten the scholarly with details of manuscript or historical abstruseness while at the same time including an introduction that is clear and informative to those who have never heard of Plutarch.
Philip reportedly was hired by chair Albert Suskin on the advice of Kenneth Reckford who had been a fellow-student at Harvard and had come to UNC the year before. Both men would serve their entire careers at Chapel Hill and retire on the same day after 40 years of service. Philip served as chair of the department for a decade, he edited AJP, he was a director of the APA and twice served CAMWS as Vice-President for North Carolina. His greater contribution to CAMWS will be found by looking around any CAMWS meeting. You will see any number of Stadter students who have become leaders in research and service to the association. Si monumentum requiritis, circumspicite.
A gifted and generous teacher, he came to Chapel Hill when palaeography was largely ignored in the classroom. Philip was happy to take time to train those of us who were interested in reading manuscripts and deciphering apparatuses in what was essentially an extra course for him, but he loved his subjects, he was generous with his time and learning, and he cared deeply about the transmission of the traditions of our field to the coming generations. As John Moles put it at the end of his review of Philip’s Pericles, “Like P[lutrach]’s Pericles himself, S[tadter] is ‘not perhaps in all respects irreproachable but possesses a noble disposition and an ambitious spirit’… and his great ἔργον will excite admiration for generations.”
Philip Stadter died in Pittsboro, NC, on February 11, 2021.