Lisa Kallet (1956-2025), a distinguished graduate of AHMA and a renowned scholar of Greek history, passed away, a victim of double pneumonia, amidst her family, on February 15, 2025 in Northampton, Mass.
Lisa was born in New York City and grew up in New Rochelle, NY. A gifted musician, she studied both cello and piano (classical and jazz), and even picked up the guitar. She loved to sing and tried her hand at writing songs. She was from the start a lover of cats, especially Siamese, an attachment she retained throughout her life. Her favorite reading as a youth was mythology, an auspicious harbinger of her future profession.
Lisa did her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and at the University of Colorado, Boulder. At the latter her mentor Hunter Rawlings first introduced her to Thucydides for whom she developed a lifelong passion. Thucydides stood at the center of her graduate work as well. She compiled an outstanding record in her seminars under the tutelage primarily of Ron Stroud, Raphael Sealey, and Erich Gruen, who also served as her dissertation advisers. Lisa’s sharp mind, dry and often caustic wit, and her research skills stood out among her graduate peers. Her deep familiarity with Thucydides and her extensive knowledge of Athenian epigraphy gave her the skills to produce a superb dissertation that led to two acclaimed books. Lisa’s special expertise lay in the 5th century Athenian empire as disclosed by Thucydides and in Attic inscriptions. The topic, a central one in Greek history, was well worked over, but Lisa brought fresh insights and deeper understanding that invigorated the subject. Her first book, Money, Expense, and Naval Power in Thucydides’ 1-5.24, boldly challenged the scholarly consensus that Thucydides inadequately understood the impact of financial resources upon naval power in Athenian history. Lisa’s scrupulous dissection of the text and her thorough command of the epigraphic record reassessed Thucydides’ depiction of the Archaeology, the Pentakontaetia, and the Archidamian war. She demonstrated the historian’s full comprehension of the link between finance and empire, missed by historians operating with modern notions of economy and finance. Her second book, Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides, focused upon the ill-fated Sicilian expedition. Lisa drew out illuminatingly the narrative features of Thucydides’ account, his echoes of Homer and Herodotus, and she explored the historian’s treatment of money in its insidious role of both expanding and undermining Athenian power. Her approach relied as much on her keen literary analysis as her command of the inscriptional testimony, a combination of gifts that makes the book an exceptional achievement.
These important and influential books, as well as an array of articles in the top classical journals, brought Lisa to the attention of the scholarly world and earned her a plethora of accolades and awards, including a Fulbright fellowship, a National Foundation for the Humanities award, and appointments to the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Whitehead Professorship in the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Her distinguished teaching career took her to Smith College, Swarthmore College, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Texas, Austin, and ultimately to a coveted post, rarely accorded to an American, a tenured position at Oxford University. She became a valued member of that eminent Classics faculty, and succeeded the beloved Greek historian George Cawkwell at University College. She shared Cawkwell’s deep care for students, offering both challenge and inspiration to them. Among many tasks discharged as a member of the Classics community, Lisa became a great support and indispensable help to Cawkwell in his final years and played a selfless role in preparing his collected papers for publication. In that same period, she published her third book, The Athenian Empire: Using Coins as Sources, in collaboration with her devoted husband, the esteemed numismatist Jack Kroll, a work of scholarly expertise but geared to a wider public of enthusiasts for ancient history.
Lisa’s passing is a serious loss to the world of scholarship, but even more to family, friends, colleagues, and a multitude of former students. Her wit, humor, forthrightness, and acute intelligence, her nourishment of students, and her sensitive appreciation of both the qualities and the foibles of fellow human beings put her in a rare class. She is survived by her husband Jack Kroll, her sister Cindy Kallet, her brother Kevin Fitzpatrick, her nephews Arthur Blodgett, Gabriel Blodgett, David Fitzpatrick, and Shawn Fitzpatrick, her stepchildren Naomi Kroll Hassebroek, Jesse Kroll, Emily Kroll, and their six children.