Roy W. Davies

Roy William Davies (1942–1977) was a British classicist and historian of ancient warfare whose main research interest was the Roman army.

His magnum opus, Service in the Roman Army (1989), based on papers edited and compiled by David Breeze and Valerie Maxfield, was published posthumously.

Early life and education Davies was born in Liverpool and attended the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys. He graduated from Durham University in 1963 with a first in classics and stayed on for a PhD. His thesis, Peace-time routine in the Roman Army, was supervised by Eric Birley and completed in 1967.

Career and research

Davies lectured for a period of time at both Durham and the University of Leeds. He was appointed to a lectureship at the Sunderland College of Education, where he worked until his premature death at the age of 35. The final book, which Anthony Birley compared to Soldier and Civilian in the Later Roman Empire (1963) by Ramsay Macmullen, is generally "accessible" to non-academic readers and features a sizeable bibliography.