Michael C. J. Putnam

Michael Courtney Jenkins Putnam (September 20, 1933 – August 19, 2025) was an American classicist specializing in Latin literature, who also studied literature written in other languages. Putnam was particularly influential in his publications concerning Virgil's Aeneid, and considered a founding member of the Harvard School, which interpreted the poem as containing messages of dissent against the emperor Augustus and his imperialistic ideology.

Life and career Putnam received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Harvard. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1959 he taught at Smith College for a year. He then moved on to teach at Brown University and served as W. Duncan MacMillan II Professor of Classics and a professor of comparative literature for 48 years before retiring in 2008. At Brown he served several terms as chair of the department of Classics, as a member of the faculty of comparative literature, and on the Committee on Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.

He was awarded the 1963 Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome and was later a Resident of the academy (1970) and its Mellon Professor in Charge of the Classical School (1989–91). He became a trustee of the academy in 1991, was awarded its Centennial Medal in 2009, and in 2010 was made a life trustee and awarded its Trustees' Medal. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996 and the American Philosophical Society in 1998. He was awarded the Alexander G. MacKay Prize by the Vergilian Society of America in 2009, and served as a trustee of the society between 2013 and 2016.

Michael Putnam was the son of politician and businessman Roger Putnam. He served as sole trustee of Lowell Observatory from 1967 to 1987. Asteroid 2557 Putnam was named in his and his father’s honor.

Publications In addition to a number of articles and reviews, Putnam published the following books: The Poetry of the Aeneid (1965) Virgil's Pastoral Art: Studies in the Eclogues (1970) Tibullus: A Commentary (1973) Virgil's Poem of the Earth (1979) Essays on Latin Lyric, Elegy, and Epic (1982) Artifices of Eternity: Horace's Fourth Book of Odes (1986) Virgil's Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence (1995) Virgil's Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid (1998) Horace's Carmen Saeculare: Ritual Magic and the Poet's Art (2000) Poetic Interplay: Catullus and Horace (2006) The Vergilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (2010, edited with Joseph Farrell) Jacopo Sannazaro: The Latin Poetry (2009) The Humanness of Heroes: Studies in the Conclusion of Virgil's Aeneid (2011) The Complete Poems of Tibullus: An En Face Bilingual Edition (2012, with Rodney Dennis) The Poetic World of Statius' Silvae (2023, with Antony Augoustakis and Carole Newlands)

He translated and edited Maffeo Vegio: Short Epics (2004); Poetic Interplay: Catullus and Horace (2006).