The National Member Elio Lo Cascio passed away on 8 September at the age of 78, after a long illness, which he faced with courage and a love of life, never losing his passion for scholarship. Members of the Academy recall his constant presence right up to the final day of the 2025–2026 academic year. He had been appointed a Corresponding Member in 2017. He is regarded as one of the most prominent figures in contemporary classical studies.
Professor Emeritus at Sapienza University of Rome, he graduated from the same university in 1970 under the guidance of his mentor, Santo Mazzarino. From 1973, he served as a full-time assistant in Roman History. He subsequently pursued his academic career at several universities: first as a lecturer and later as Associate Professor of Roman History at the University of Lecce (1976–1986); then as Full Professor at the University of L’Aquila (1986–1990), where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Education; and subsequently at the University of Naples Federico II (1990–2006).
His exemplary dedication to teaching was always accompanied by a profound sense of institutional responsibility and a constant concern for the future of classical studies. Particularly significant in this respect was his role as founder and first president (1996–2002) of the Consulta Universitaria per la Storia greca e romana. From 2004 to 2024, he served on the Board of Directors of the Italian Institute for Ancient History. He sat on numerous editorial boards of Italian and international journals and was a member of major research evaluation committees.
He was one of the Italian classical scholars most active on the international stage, particularly in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and Spain. In this context, with rare generosity, he carried out invaluable work in building scholarly connections and promoting Italian culture. The same pronounced openness to the wider scholarly community led him – especially during his years of teaching in Naples – to undertake significant initiatives in academic and cultural organization, which left a lasting impression on the community of classical scholars.
His scholarly work addressed major themes, notably the administrative history of the Imperial period; the institutional history of the Republican period; the economic and social history of the Roman world; population history; and the history of modern historiography of the ancient world. His scholarly approach was distinguished by a combination of extensive philological expertise and a tendency to analyse subjects through categories and models.
Lo Cascio examined literary sources, papyri, inscriptions, and coins with consummate mastery and also displayed a keen sensitivity in the interpretation of legal texts (municipal laws, imperial constitutions, and fragments of jurisprudence). At the same time, he was able to bring his research to a high level of conceptualization, navigating with admirable balance -– yet without compromise – among certain ideological tendencies (including the ideology of empiricism) characteristic of the 1980s and 1990s, but by no means exhausted today.
Elio Lo Cascio’s bibliography is extremely extensive, but, merely by way of illustration, the following works may be mentioned as examples of his approach: “State and Coinage in the Late Republic and Early Empire” (1981), “Teoria e politica monetaria a Roma tra III e IV d.C.” (1986), “Forme dell’economia imperiale” and “Fra equilibrio e crisi” (both 1991), “Prezzo dell’oro e prezzi delle merci” (1993), “The Size of the Roman Population” (1994), “La ‘New Institutional Economics’ e l’economia imperiale romana” (2005), “Did the Population of Imperial Rome Reproduce Itself?” (2006), “Die neue Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Römischen Reiches. Paradigmen und Ansätze” (2017), Silla, la moneta e il credito (2018), and “Setting the Rules of the Game: The Market and Its Working in the Roman Empire” (2020).
Where appropriate – and especially in research devoted to population history – his perspective extended, with due caution but with compelling results, to historical comparison (for an example of this comparative approach, see also his 1978 study “Gli alimenta, l’agricoltura italica e l’approvvigionamento di Roma”). This approach fostered collaboration with specialists in other disciplines. Among his works on the history of historiography, particular mention should be made of his 2002 essay on the celebrated book by his mentor Mazzarino, Aspetti sociali del quarto secolo (1951). All his studies are characterized by clear and rigorous prose.
His overall interpretation of Roman history was characterized by an emphasis on discontinuity. In contrast to prevailing perspectives that stressed continuity, he insisted on moments of rupture – writing numerous important studies on the crisis of the third century AD – and on the need for morphological analysis. By carefully avoiding anachronism, he effectively countered primitivist tendencies, emphasizing the intensity of the productive and dynamic processes of the Roman economy and stressing the widespread economic role of money. At the same time, he highlighted the importance of government intervention in monetary, economic, and demographic policy.
Unfortunately, Elio Lo Cascio did not live to see the publication of two important works: The Oxford Handbook of the Economies of the Classical World, edited by A. Bresson, E. Lo Cascio, M. Maiuro, and F. Velde and published by Oxford University Press; and a collection of his studies on currency and monetary policy in ancient Rome, Studies on Rome’s Market and Monetary Economy, published by Cambridge University Press. His friends, colleagues, and younger scholars will all have the opportunity to appreciate these remarkable legacies of his intellect and learning.