Taylor, Lily Ross (1886–1969)

American classicist and educator who helped develop the influential 20th-century view of Roman political history and religion, including the areas of the Roman Republic's political structure and religious cults. Born on August 12, 1886, in Auburn, Alabama; died after being struck by a car on November 18, 1969, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania; daughter of William Dana Taylor (a railway engineer and professor) and Mary (Ross) Taylor; educated at preparatory department of Pritchett College, Glasgow, Missouri, and at Madison High School; University of Wisconsin, A.B., 1906; attended the American Academy in Rome; Bryn Mawr College, Ph.D., 1912.

Selected works:

Local Cults in Etruria (1932); The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (1931); Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (1949); The Voting Districts of the Roman Republic: The Thirty-five Urban and Rural Tribes (1960); Roman Voting Assemblies (1966).

Born in 1886 in Alabama, Lily Ross Taylor was the eldest of three children of William Dana Taylor and Mary Ross Taylor . Her mother died in 1895, and two years later her father, a well-known railway engineer, married Annie L. McIntyre , with whom he had three more children. William's work led the family around the country, before they eventually settled in Wisconsin in 1901. There her father was appointed a professor of railway engineering and Taylor attended high school and college.

Initially studying mathematics, Taylor realized from a course on Lucretius during her junior year that Roman studies interested her more. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1906 and started graduate school at Bryn Mawr College that same year. From 1909 to 1910, she studied in Rome and then returned to Bryn Mawr to receive her Ph.D. in 1912. Her first book was her thesis, The Cults of Ostia (1912). That same year she became a Latin instructor at Vassar College, where she remained until 1927, eventually earning the title of professor.

In 1917, she became the first woman to receive a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, although due to World War I, she left the academy for a few years to serve in the American Red Cross in Italy and the Balkans. She returned to the American academy in Rome in 1919 and remained there until 1920. Appointed professor and chair of the Latin department at Bryn Mawr in 1927, Taylor was named dean of the graduate school there in 1942. An excellent teacher, she was professionally acknowledged in 1952 with the Life Magazine Teachers Award.

In addition to teaching, Taylor was an associate editor for Classical Philology during the 1940s, and from 1943 to 1944 worked as a principal social science analyst in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. She was active in professional organizations as well, including the American Philological Association, for which she served as president in 1942, and the American Institute of Archeology, of which she was vice-president from 1935 to 1937. In 1947, she became the first woman appointed Sather Professor of Classics at the University of California. Her Sather Lectures were published in 1949 as Party Politics in the Age of Caesar.

In 1952, Taylor retired from Bryn Mawr to assume directorship of the Classical School of the American Academy in Rome, where she remained until 1955. Returning to Bryn Mawr, she lectured throughout the United States between 1956 and 1957 as a Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she served as visiting professor at several universities, and also spent a year at Princeton University as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. From 1964 to 1965, she was Jerome Lecturer at the American Academy in Rome and the University of Michigan.

A member of the American Philosophical Society and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Taylor was honored with the Achievement Award of the American Association of University Women in 1952, the Citation for Distinguished Service from Bryn Mawr (awarded at the college's 75th anniversary) in 1960, the Award of Merit of the American Philological Association and the Cultori di Roma gold medal from the city of Rome, both in 1962. Throughout her life she was an enthusiastic traveler, and her fluency in Italian made Italy a favorite and rewarding place to visit. Taylor was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Bryn Mawr in 1969, at the age of 83.

sources:

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1980.

Karina L. Kerr , M.A., Ypsilanti, Michigan