APCOM

The Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of Milano's Università Cattolica awarded the degree honoris causa in Philology, literatures and civilizations of the ancient world to Philip A. Stadter, professor emeritus at Chapel Hill University, in North Carolina. Stadter is acknowledged as one of the most important classicists in the United States and among the greatest experts of the ancient historical thought.

He investigated it by following an ingenious path, going back from the authors of the imperial roman age (above all Plutarch) to classical Greek models. "The awarding of this degree" declared Stadter "confirms the current importance of philology, literatures and civilizations of the ancient world and the need to study the past in order to understand the present".

The prestigious bestowment is justified not only by the scholar's undisputed scientific authority at an international level (Stadter has been president of the International Plutarch Society and he directed the American Journal of Philology), underlined chancellor Lorenzo Ornaghi: "His interest in the ancient historical thought, and in particular for the anthropologic investigation of Plutarch, is always matched with the Christian interest for the human being as a person".

Stadter's bonds with Italy are significant too. After studying at Harvard, in 1960, thanks to a scholarship he attended the American Academy in Roma, where he met his future wife, Lucia, then a student of Giuseppe Billanovich at Milano's Università Cattolica. Stadter himself began to follow the famous intellectuals, as he explained: "Billanovich and Herbert Bloch are the masters who most influenced my research and the two main topics of study, the history of libraries and the biographies of Plutarch".