Background
He was married to the psychoanalyst Helen Block Lewis (1913-1987), and they had two children, John Block Lewis and Judith Lewis Herman, a physician who followed in her mother"s professional footsteps.
( Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold's Roman Civilization ...)
Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold's Roman Civilization is a classic. Originally published by Columbia University Press in 1955, the authors have undertaken another revision which takes into account recent work in the field. These volumes consist of selected primary documents from ancient Rome, covering a range of over 1,000 years of Roman culture, from the foundation of the city to its sacking by the Goths. The selections cover a broad spectrum of Roman civilization, including literature, philosophy, religion, education, politics, military affairs, and economics. These English translations of literary, inscriptional, and papyrological sources, many of which are available nowhere else, create a mosaic of the brilliance, the beauty, and the power of Rome.
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He was married to the psychoanalyst Helen Block Lewis (1913-1987), and they had two children, John Block Lewis and Judith Lewis Herman, a physician who followed in her mother"s professional footsteps.
He also wrote several social histories of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt to make his research more accessible to non-specialists. Lewis did his undergraduate studies in classical languages and French at City College of New York (Bachelor of Arts,magna cum laude 1930) and earned an Master of Arts at Columbia (1932). He generally found the lectures rather mechanical but his curiosity in what was to become the object of a lifelong research interest was stirred where he did course work in his final year, when he read, together with Meyer Reinhold and Moses Finkelstein, the Zenon papyri under the direction of William Linn Westermann.
Lewis pursued further postgraduate studies in Europe with a fellowship from the American Field Service.
After receiving a certificate at the University of Strasbourg (1933), he went to Paris where he pursued his studies on papyrology under Paul Collart, and more generally, trained as an historian under Gustave Glotz. His first work, a doctoral thesis in French, was L"industrie du papyrus dans l"Égypte gréco-romaine (Paris,1934), a study of the papyrus plant and how it was manufactured and used for writing.
He published an English version of his thesis much later in 1974 under the title Papyrus in Classical Antiquity. He spoke French fluently but with a Bronx accent.
He then moved to Rome and furthered his research for 2 years at the American Academy in Rome, working on the Fouad papyri.
He also managed to travel widely at this time, visiting the Mediterranean, travelling through the Levant and Palestine and sojourning in Istanbul and Athens. On returning to the United States, where the effects of the Depression made empoloyment difficult, he did odd jobs and filled part-time posts until, in 1928, Casper Kraemer managed to get him a post at New York University on the recommendation that he conduct research on the Karanis papyri. When WW2 broke out he became a translator for the Engineer Corps, and later head of war research at Columbia University.
From 1947 until 1976 Lewis taught at Brooklyn College (whence he retired as Distinguished Professor) and was also involved in the City University"s Graduate School.
He served as president of the American Society of Papyrologists (1965–1969) and as president of the Association Internationale de Papyrologues (1974–1983). Citations.
( Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold's Roman Civilization ...)