Richard Billows
Professor of History
(212) 854-4486
rab4@columbia.edu
322M Fayerweather
Research Interests
Professor Richard Billows specializes in Ancient Greek and Roman History, with particular interests in the so-called Hellenistic Era (ca. 330 to 30 BCE) and the Roman Republic in its later phase (ca. 220-27 BCE), though recently his interests have also come to include the origins of Christianity in the first two centuries CE. Professor Billows regularly teaches the Columbia College core curriculum class “An Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West” and an introductory lecture course on “The Ancient Greeks”, in addition to a variety of more specialized courses on aspects of Greek and (sometimes) Roman history. Professor Billows was for many years the Chair of the Graduate Interdepartmental Program in Classical Studies.
Ph.D. — University of California, Berkeley, 1985
M.A. — King's College, University of London, 1979
B.A. — Balliol College, Oxford University, 1978
Selected Publications
The Spear, the Scroll, and the Pebble: How the Greek City-State Developed as a Male Warrior-Citizen Collective (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023)
Before and After Alexander: The Legacy and Legend of Alexander the Great (Overlook/Duckworth, 2018)
The Hellenica Oxyrhynchia (text, translation, and commentary) for Brill's New Jacoby, no. 66 (Brill, 2016)
Marathon: How One Battle Changed Western Civilization (Overlook/Duckworth, 2010)
Julius Caesar: the Colossus of Rome (Routledge, 2008)
Kings and Colonists: Aspects of Macedonian Imperialism (Brill, 1995)
Antigonos the One-Eyed and the Creation of the Hellenistic State (U California Press, 1990)
