Jane F. Gardner

Jane F. Gardner (10 March 1934 – 28 January 2023) was a British Roman historian, academic, and museum curator. She was emerita professor of Roman History at University of Reading, specialising in Roman law and Roman social history. She was a professor at the university from 1993 until her retirement in 1999, having taught there since 1963. She was curator of the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology from 1976 to 1992.

Early life and education Gardner was born in Glasgow on 10 March 1934 to a mixed Protestant-Catholic working-class family: her father, who had left school at 12, worked for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway while her mother (who had no secondary education) looked after their family. While at school, Gardner won first prize in Glasgow's Hutcheson Trust Bursary examination; she later won a Ferguson Fellowship to study Classics at the University of Glasgow, where she matriculated in 1951. From there she went on to study for a second degree in Literae Humaniores (Classics) at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, graduating in 1962 with a double first.

Between 1976 and 1979, Gardner was a member of the Council of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.

Research Gardner's research focused primarily on Roman economic and social history, especially the use of Roman law in historical research and the legal and economic history of Roman women; she published extensively on the Roman family, Roman property law, the legal status of individuals, and the role of slaves and freedmen in Roman society, and her research has been described as "ground-breaking" in its wide-ranging use of sources, including inscriptions and papyri as well as literary texts. These monographs remain the most important works on their subjects.

Gardner also produced a revised translation of Julius Caesar's Gallic War (1983), as well as a new translation of his Civil War (1976). According to an obituary, these two Penguin translations, along with other publications such as Roman Myths (part of the British Museum's Legendary Past series, 1993), represent Gardner's "great commitment to the dissemination of Classical scholarship beyond the confines of academia and the field in a narrow sense", as did her role as a volunteer lecturer in Greek and Classics at the Working Men's College in Camden from 1979 to 1981. She continued to write and publish on Roman law and society, especially on slavery, and continued to review books in The Classical Review.

Gardner died on 28 January 2023, at the age of 88.

Selected publications Gardner, Jane F. 1986. Women in Roman Law and Society. Croom Helm Gardner, Jane F., Weidemann T. 1991. The Roman Household: a Sourcebook. Routledge Gardner, Jane F. 1993. Being a Roman Citizen. Routledge Gardner, Jane F. 1998. Family and Familia in Roman Law and Life. Clarendon Press Weidemann, T., Gardner, Jane F. 2002 Representing the Body of the Slave. Frank Cass