G. E. M. de Ste. Croix

Ste. Croix died on 5 February 2000 in Oxford, England.

In 1972, Ste. Croix was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. He was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize for 1982.

Ste. Croix is best known for his books The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972) and The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (1981). He was also a noted contributor on the issue of Christian persecution between the reigns of the Roman Emperors Trajan and Diocletian. Of particular note in this regard are the articles written by Ste. Croix and A. N. Sherwin-White, each challenging the opinions of the other. There were four in total, displaying the light-hearted banter evident also in Ste. Croix's correspondence with Moses Finley.

In 1950, Ste. Croix was appointed assistant lecturer in ancient economic history at the London School of Economics. He also taught at Birkbeck College and UCL. He struggled to attract students to his courses and was embarrassed to be a lecturer in "a subject which no one was required or wished to study". In 1953, he was elected fellow and tutor in ancient history at New College, Oxford: he lived at Oxford for the rest of his life. Due to a long-standing agreement with his opposite number, C. E. Stevens, he led tutorials in Greek history for classicists from New College and Magdalen College, Oxford: Stevens, in return, taught Roman history. In 1964, he attempted to convince his college to become the first of Oxford's all-male colleges to accept women: he failed, but helped change attitudes through the university. Turning his hand to college administration, he served as Senior Tutor for a number of years. He also held a university lectureship, and gave lecture series in Greek History and topics such as slavery, finance, and food supply. He gave the J. H. Gray lectures at the University of Cambridge for the 1972/73 academic year: these lectures developed into The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981). He retired from full-time academia in 1977 and was appointed Emeritus Fellow: the college elected him an Honorary Fellow in 1985.

Ste. Croix's influential article The Character of the Athenian Empire, which first appeared in Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte (1954, 3, pp. 1–41), provoked a fresh debate about the nature of the Delian League and the Athenian Empire which continues to this day. The article was based on a paper The Alleged Unpopularity of the Athenian Empire delivered to the London Classical Association on 14 June 1950.

In 1946, having been demobbed from the RAF, Ste. Croix matriculated into University College, London (UCL) to study ancient history: he preferred London over Oxbridge, because it offered a history course covering c. 3000BC to the death of Heraclius in AD641, not classics (with its focus on language and philosophy). His main tutor was A. H. M. Jones, the college's new chair of the Ancient History, who remained an influencing figure on Ste. Croix's work beyond his graduation. He graduated from University College, London with a first-class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1949. He was awarded a Doctor of Letters (DLitt) degree by the University of Oxford in 1978.

In 1940, Ste. Croix was called up for military service in the Second World War. On 18 July 1941, he was commissioned in the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an acting pilot officer (on probation) with seniority from 12 June 1941. He was regraded as a pilot officer (on probation) on 18 September 1941. His commission was confirmed on 18 July 1942, and he was promoted to flying officer on 18 September 1942 with seniority in that rank from 12 August 1942. He job in the RAF was to interpret enemy radar signals to ascertain the location and destination of their aircraft. He served most of the War in the Middle East, stationed at Ismailia, Alexandria, and Cyrenaica: in Egypt he had the opportunity to expand his knowledge of ancient languages. An atheist, he fought for, and was eventually allowed, exemption from the required Sunday services.

During this time Ste. Croix became interested in politics. Though he had had, according to himself, received a "thoroughly right-wing upbringing", he was drawn to the left. He visited Russia in 1935 or 1936, but moved away from Stalinism in 1938. He would later join the Labour Party.

He left school at the age of 15 and became an articled clerk in Worthing, West Sussex, England. This allowed him to train for a legal career without a degree in law, and he was admitted as a solicitor in 1932. He practised in Worthing and then in London, until he was called up for war service in 1940.

In 1932, Ste. Croix married Lucile. Together they had one daughter (died 1964). The couple divorced in 1959. That year, he married Margaret Knight. He had two sons from his second marriage.

After his father's death in 1914, Florence emigrated with her only child to the United Kingdom. Ste Croix was educated at Clifton College, then an all-boys independent school in Bristol, England. There, he became proficient in Latin and Greek, and a talented tennis player. He won the under-16 South of England championship, and would go on to compete at Wimbledon in 1930, 1931, and 1932. He had once defeated Fred Perry in a minor tournament.

Geoffrey Ernest Maurice de Ste. Croix, FBA (/dəseɪntˈkrɔɪ/; 8 February 1910 – 5 February 2000), known informally as Croicks, was a British historian who specialised in examining Ancient Greece from a Marxist perspective. He was Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at New College, Oxford, from 1953 to 1977, where he taught scholars including Robin Lane Fox, Robert Parker and Nicholas Richardson.

Ste. Croix (Sainte Croix) was born on 8 February 1910 in Macau, and baptised in St John's Cathedral, Hong Kong. His parents were also born in China to British expatriates. His father, Ernest Henry de Ste Croix, who died when he was four, was an official in the Chinese Customs. Their Huguenot ancestors fled to Jersey during the time of Louis XIV. His mother, Florence Annie (née MacGowan), was the daughter of a Protestant missionary: she was a firm believer in British Israelism. Her fundamentalist Protestant beliefs were ever present in his childhood: he would become a firm atheist.