Marion Elizabeth Blake (1892–1961)

Marion Elizabeth Blake was born in New Britain, Connecticut, and majored in Greek and Latin at Mount Holyoke College. She earned her master's degree in 1917 and her Ph.D. in 1921 from Cornell University. She was a professor of classical languages at five American colleges during the years 1912 through 1938: Illinois College, Converse College, Mount Holyoke, Sweet Briar College, and Winthrop College. She then took a position as a research associate in Roman archaeology at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C. She worked at the American Academy in Rome from 1947 to 1961. She took on the task of completing her colleague Esther Boise Van Deman's unfinished manuscript of Ancient Roman Construction in Italy from the Prehistoric Period to Augustus following the latter's death in 1937. Dr. Blake's own third and final book, Roman Construction in Italy from Nerva through the Antonines, was completed after her death in 1973 by Doris Taylor Bishop. Dr. Blake also wrote Roman Construction in Italy from Tiberius through the Flavians (1959).