Edward J. Watts

Edward J. Watts studies political, intellectual and religious change in the Roman and early Byzantine worlds. A historian at UC San Diego, he holds the Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair and teaches subjects connected to Rome and late antiquity. The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea, published by Oxford University Press in 2021, traces more than two millennia of arguments about Roman decline, renewal and restoration rather than narrating a single collapse. Watts’s other works include Mortal Republic, on the end of the Roman Republic, and The Final Pagan Generation, which follows elites living through the empire’s religious transformation. His scholarship connects ancient political language with the later uses made of Roman history.