Noel Lenski
· Dunham Professor of Classics and History; Chair of ClassicsYale University · Department of Classics
Active 1995–2025
Academic metrics are sourced from OpenAlex and public funding records; values may differ from Google Scholar.
About
Noel Lenski is the Dunham Professor of Classics and History and serves as Chair of the Department of Classics at Yale University. He studied Classics at The Colorado College, earning his BA in 1989, and completed his MA and PhD in Classics and Ancient History at Princeton in 1995. His research primarily focuses on Roman history, with a particular emphasis on the history of the later Roman Empire. Lenski's scholarly interests include power relations across all levels of society, from emperors to slaves, and his work spans broad areas of Late Antiquity, including political, military, social, economic, religious, cultural, and art history.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Sociology
- History
- Ancient history
- Law
- Art
- Economic history
- Archaeology
- Literature
- Economy
Selected publications
Slavery in the Byzantine Empire
Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021 · 68 citations
1st authorCorrespondingByzantium continued traditions of slaveholding it inherited from the Roman Empire, but these were transformed significantly from the fourth century onward as slavery came to play a diminished role in the generation of economic surplus. Laws governing slaveholding gradually diminished the power of slaveholders and improved the rights of slaves by restricting a master's right to abuse, prostitute, expose, and murder slaves and their children. Legal norms also eliminated penal servitude, opened the…
2019-07-26 · 7 citations
book1st authorCorrespondingCambridge University Press eBooks · 2022 · 3 citations
1st authorCorrespondingThe question of Visigothic slavery has generally been treated in the context of larger studies on the Visigoths or of the Mediterranean economy rather than studies devoted to slavery. Even when it has been examined as a thing unto itself, it has tended to get folded into larger narratives of the development of social relations in the early Middle Ages. Marxist historians, such as Abilio Barbero, Marcelo Vigil, and Chris Wickham, have attempted to fit the evidence into a historical materialist na…
Springer eBooks · 2023 · 1 citations
1st authorCorrespondingAbstract The Roman Empire developed one of the largest and most economically and culturally integrated systems of slavery in world history. It thrived on a remarkably robust supply stream that included enslavement by birth, capture, sale from foreign and domestic sources, the reclaiming of exposed infants, and—in late antiquity—self-sale, child sale, and debt bondage. Enslavement was imposed upon people from all regions, inside and outside the empire, and was never inflicted exclusively on a par…
Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-11-27
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 6 shared
Catherine M. Cameron
- 5 shared
Kim Bok-rae
- 5 shared
Robert Gudmestad
Colorado State University
- 5 shared
Fernando Santos‐Granero
Smithsonian Institution
- 5 shared
Paul E. Lovejoy
- 5 shared
Theresa A. Singleton
- 5 shared
Matthew S. Hopper
University of Minnesota
- 5 shared
Ehud R. Toledano
Awards & honors
- Winkler Prize
Similar researchers at Yale University
- Resume-aware match score
- Save to shortlist
- AI-drafted outreach
See your match with Noel Lenski
PhdFit ranks faculty by your research interests, methods, and publications — grounded in their actual work, not templates.
- Free to start
- No credit card
- 30-second signup