Taylor, Lily Ross (1886–1969)

US classicist and ancient historian. Her seven books and more than 70 articles focused on Roman politics and political institutions, including the cults of Ostia and Etruria. Her Divinity of the Roman Empire (1931) was the first extensive study of that subject and remains a classic. Both her teaching and her scholarship received many honours; Life magazine cited her as one of the country's great teachers, and her Voting Districts of the Roman Republic (1962) won the Goodwin Award of the American Philological Association.

Taylor was born in Auburn, Alabama. A student of the classicist Tenney Frank, she spent most of her teaching career at Bryn Mawr (1927–52). At the time of her death in a car accident at the age of 83, she was working on a study of the Roman Senate.