When and where was Ronald Syme born?
Ronald Syme arrived in the world on the 11th of March 1903 within the quiet town of Eltham, New Zealand. His father David and mother Florence raised him there before he entered primary school.
Ronald Syme arrived in the world on the 11th of March 1903 within the quiet town of Eltham, New Zealand. His father David and mother Florence raised him there before he entered primary school.
World War II found Ronald Syme working as a press attaché for Britain abroad. He served first in Belgrade where he learned the Serbo-Croatian language fluently and later accepted a chair in classical philology at Istanbul University.
Syme published The Roman Revolution in 1939 to challenge widely accepted views about Octavian who became Augustus. He argued that Augustus established a dictatorship disguised as a republic using prosopography to trace kinship links between leading families.
Oxford University Press released a definitive two-volume biography of Tacitus in 1958 while his next major publication appeared in 1964 as a biography of Sallust. History in Ovid came out in 1978 to place the poet firmly in social context.
No proof exists to confirm theories that Ronald Syme gathered information or conducted covert operations behind diplomatic lines during World War II. His official duties remained public but his true activities stayed hidden from view despite speculation by observers.