Edward J. Watts

His early work, which focused on the cultural and religious changes affecting philosophy and educational life as the Roman Empire embraced Christianity, included City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria,^[4] which won the CAMWS Outstanding Publication award.^[5]

His later works have described social and political change in the Roman world in a fashion that prompted popular reflections about twenty-first century society. The Final Pagan Generation, which offers a generational history of the men born in the 310s that traces the experience of living through the Christianization of the Roman Empire, sparked a series of conversations among conservative thinkers and other intellectuals about similar, dramatic shifts quietly taking place in twenty-first century life.^[6][7]

His books focused on political change in the Roman and Byzantine worlds, The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome and Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny prompted economists^[8][9] as well as cultural^[10][11] and political commentators in the United States^[12][13] and around the world,^[14][15] to consider the relevance of the legacies of the Roman world to modern representative democracies and culture. He is also the creator of the YouTube channel Rome's Eternal Decline.

• City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (2008)^[16]
• Riot in Alexandria: Tradition and Group Dynamics in Late Antique Pagan and Christian Communities (2010)^[17]
• The Final Pagan Generation (2015)^[18][19]
• Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (2017)^[20][21][22]
• Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny (2018)^[2]
• The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea (2021)^[23][24]
• The Romans: A 2,000-Year History (2025)^[25][26]