Classics scholar has a long history with Ancient Rome

Garrett Fagan is a professor of ancient history at Penn State. His primary research interests pertain to Roman history and archaeology, a topic he has been studying and writing about since his childhood in Ireland. When Garrett Fagan was 12 years old, his mother put him under "house arrest" for the summer in his native Dublin, Ireland, and inadvertently created a classicist. "My parents were building a new family home," explains Fagan, who is professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and history at Penn State. "When it wasn't ready on schedule, we had to move into the rooms above my father's dentist office. It was in a less salubrious part of town and my mother thought I might get beaten up outside for having the wrong kind of accent, so I stayed indoors a lot and I read books about Ancient Rome all summer." Since joining the University faculty in 1996, Fagan has earned a reputation as a leading expert on ancient warfare and as an engaging teacher - a scholar who approaches classical studies in a manner that helps us reflect on our own cultural issues. For example, in his most recent book, The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Game , he explores spectatorship at the Roman arena.