Edward Jay Watts

Edward J. Watts (born 1 March 1975) is an American classical historian and writer. Since 2012, he has been a professor of history at University of California, San Diego and co-directed the San Diego Center for Hellenic Studies.

Public impact His early work, which focused on the cultural and religious changes affecting philosophy and educational life as the Roman Empire embraced Christianity, included City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, which won the CAMWS Outstanding Publication award.

His later works have described social and political change in the Roman world in a fashion that prompted popular reflections about twenty-first century society. The Final Pagan Generation, which offers a generational history of the men born in the 310s that traces the experience of living through the Christianization of the Roman Empire, sparked a series of conversations among conservative thinkers and other intellectuals about similar, dramatic shifts quietly taking place in twenty-first century life.

His books focused on political change in the Roman and Byzantine worlds, The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome and Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny prompted economists as well as cultural and political commentators in the United States and around the world, to consider the relevance of the legacies of the Roman world to modern representative democracies and culture. He is also the creator of the YouTube channel Rome's Eternal Decline.

Books

City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria. University of California Press, 2008. Riot in Alexandria: Tradition and Group Dynamics in Late Antique Pagan and Christian Communities. Universtiy of California Press, 2010. The Final Pagan Generation: Rome's Unexpected Path to Christianity. University of California Press, 2015. Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher. Oxford University Press, 2017. Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny. Basic Books, 2018. The Romans: A 2,000-Year History. Basic Books, 2025.