Education
BA, UNC Charlotte (English and History)
Post-Bacc. Certificate in Classics, UNC Chapel Hill
MA and MPHil, Yale University (Classics)
PhD, Yale University (Classics)
Biography
John Noël Dillon is a Roman historian and classical philologist. He received his PhD in Classics at Yale in 2008 and taught at the University of Heidelberg, the University of Exeter, and Peking University, prior to joining the Yale Divinity School as Lecturer in Latin in 2017. In 2023, he was appointed Senior Lector I in Classics alongside his role at the Divinity School.
Dillon has wide interests in Roman history, literature, and culture. He has worked most extensively on the administration of the Later Roman Empire and Roman law. Other interests include textual criticism, Roman public religion, and medieval and early modern Latin literature and culture. He has extensive pragmatic experience as a professional translator.
He teaches primarily advanced language courses in Ancient Greek and Classical Latin, including Latin prose composition, for the Classics Department and introductory to intermediate courses in Medieval Latin for the Divinity School and Medieval Studies program.
Dillon’s publications include The Justice of Constantine: Law, Communication, and Control (2012), “Book I” of The Code of Justinian: A New Annotated Translation, with Parallel Latin and Greek (2016), and “The Emperor’s New Prose: The Style of Diocletian’s Legislation,” in Diocleziano: la frontiera giuridica dell’imperio (2018).
His most recent major translation projects are Markus Friedrich’s The Jesuits: A History (Princeton University Press, 2022), Hans-Ulrich Wiemer’s Theodoric the Great: King of Goths, Ruler of Romans (Yale University Press 2023), and Lisa Regazzoni, The Episteme of the Gallic Past: French Historical Research in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century (Routledge 2024).
Dillon is currently finishing a new English translation of The Theodosian Code for Cambridge University Press.
Books
- Trans. and ed. The Theodosian Code. Forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
- Trans. and ed. “Introductory Constitutions” and “First Book.” In The Code of Justinian: A New Annotated Translation, with Parallel Latin and Greek, vol. 1, ed. Bruce W. Frier, 1–405. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
- The Justice of Constantine: Law, Communication, and Control. University of Michigan Press, 2012.