Historian Wins Loeb Classical Library Fellowship

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Charles E. Muntz

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library Foundation at Harvard University have awarded Charles E. Muntz, assistant professor of history in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, a $30,000 fellowship for the 2014-15 academic year. Muntz received the award for his project, Writing the World: Diodorus I-III and the Invention of Universal History, which explores the Bibliotheke, or Library, of the first century B.C.E. Greek historian Diodorus Siculus.

Muntz will be serving as the Arkansas Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge for 2014-15.  He will use the Loeb Classical Library Fellowship to fund his research program in the United Kingdom and Europe and procure scholarly monographs.

“This is a very prestigious award from an internationally-revered organization,” said Lynda Coon, Fulbright College associate dean for the humanities. “With these recognitions from Harvard and Cambridge, professor Muntz is bringing visibility to the University of Arkansas at both the national and international level.”

Through his research, Muntz argues that the Diodorus Bibliotheke, an important attempt to outline the history and culture of the entire world, has been unfairly dismissed as simply a compendium of previous knowledge. With painstaking textual analysis of the first three books of Diodorus’ history alongside meticulous readings of other existing sources and written materials, Muntz reintroduces Diodorus to modern readers as a sophisticated scholar who wove together mythology, ethnography, geography and history to create a complex work that is closely intertwined with the intellectual and political world of the late Roman Republic.

The Loeb Classical Library has been at the forefront of classical studies for more than a century. James Loeb, a prominent banker and philanthropist from New York, studied Greek and Latin at Harvard in the 1880s. Upon graduating he joined the family business but retained a strong interest in the classics. In 1911, Loeb founded the Loeb Classical Library "for the encouragement of special research at home and abroad in the province of Archaeology and of Greek and Latin Literature."

While Loeb made his way in the business world, he supported the primacy of the classics, arts and humanities with his money and his words. According to Loeb: “In an age when the Humanities are being neglected more perhaps than at any time since the Middle Ages, and when men’s minds are turning more than ever before to the practical and the material, it does not suffice to make pleas, however eloquent and convincing, for the safeguarding and further enjoyment of our greatest heritage from the past. Means must be found to place these treasures within the reach of all who care for the finer things of life.”

Muntz earned a Bachelor of Arts with high honors in Latin from Swarthmore College (2002), with a minor in Greek and a concentration in computer science. He attended summer sessions at the American Academy in Rome (2004) and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2006) and holds a doctorate in classical studies from Duke University (2008).