Colin M. Wells (2010)

Colin M. Wells was born on November 15, 1933, in Nottingham, England. He graduated from Nottingham High School and went up to Oriel College, Oxford. He then passed his military service in Egypt. He returned to Oxford to finish a degree with an interest in philosophy. While still an undergraduate he converted to Catholicism at 21 and began his teaching career at Beaumont College, a Jesuit public school in Old Windsor. He taught at the University of Ottawa, in the northeast corner of CAMWS territory, for two years, but after marriage to Kate Hughes in 1960 and the birth of a son, he returned to Oxford, where in 1966 he completed a D.Phil. with a dissertation on the frontiers of the Roman empire under Augustus. Back at Ottawa, he chaired the Classics department, established a new classical civilization course, edited Classical News & Views / Echos du monde classique, and served as Vice Dean. All this while, he maintained an active scholarly record, producing The German Policy of Augustus in 1972. Beginning in 1976 he and Edith Wightman led the dig at Carthage. His book on the Roman Empire appeared in 1984 and has remained a popular basic account. In 1987 he moved from Ottawa to San Antonio, on the southern edge of CAMWS territory, where he had been appointed Distinguished Professor of Classics at Trinity University. He retired in 2003 and returned first to Oxford, then to a comfortable house in Normandy. He died surrounded by his family in Bangor, North Wales, on March 11, 2010.