Philip Austin Stadter ’58

Phil died Feb. 11, 2021, in Pittsboro, N.C. He was 84.

He came to Princeton from Saint Ignatius High School in Cleveland, where he participated in publications, dramatics, and debating.

At Princeton Phil majored in classics in the Special Program in the Humanities and was a member of Court Club.

After graduation, he earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1962. He served in the UNC classics department from 1962 to 2003. His graduate work was supported by a Woodrow Wilson fellowship and by a Fulbright fellowship that let him spend 1960-61 in Rome. There Phil met Lucia Ciapponi, whom he married in Italy in the summer of 1963. 

At UNC Phil served as department chair from 1976 to 1986 and as teacher of a broad range of Greek and Latin undergraduate and graduate courses. He was a leading American scholar of Greek historiography and an authority on the author Plutarch. He is remembered by the UNC classics faculty as a brilliant interlocutor and enthusiastic mentor, and, together with his wife, Lucia, as a superlatively kind and generous friend and host. 

Phil is survived by his wife of 57 years, Lucia Angela Ciapponi Stadter; their three children; nine grandchildren; and five nephews and nieces. He was preceded in death by his two brothers, John ’52 and Richard ’54; and his sister, Judith. The class extends its sincere condolences to them all.