Frank Snowden; Major Scholar of Blacks in Antiquity

At Harvard, Dr. Snowden also received a master's degree in classics in 1933 and a doctorate in 1944. His doctoral dissertation on slavery and freedom in Pompeii formed the basis of his later scholarship.

After early teaching jobs at what was then Virginia State College in Petersburg and Atlanta's Spelman College, he joined the Howard faculty in 1942 and spent many years as classics department chairman. From 1956 to 1968, Dr. Snowden was dean of Howard's College of Liberal Arts, overseeing all undergraduate programs. He helped start the school's honors program.

Starting in the late 1960s, Dr. Snowden was criticized by more militant students and teachers for his disapproval of Afrocentrism, a movement to highlight the roots of black culture often at the expense of white European civilization. Some historians likened Afrocentric teaching to "ethnic cheerleading," a position Dr. Snowden also held.

"If you're white and you criticize Afrocentrism, you're a Eurocentrist racist," he said. "If you're black and criticize it, you're a black duped by white scholarship." Above all, he thought that Afrocentrism read "20th-century biases back into antiquity and by seeing color prejudice where none existed."

During the Vietnam War era, Howard, like other universities, attracted student protests over the war and academic concerns. As a faculty leader, Dr. Snowden was a frequent target of student anger, and at one point he was hanged in effigy with university President James M. Nabrit Jr. and Selective Service director Lewis B. Hershey. He resigned his deanship soon after.

Dr. Snowden was fluent in Latin, Greek, German, French and Italian. He first visited Italy in 1938, when he won a Rosenwald fellowship, and went back a decade later as a Fulbright scholar. A frequent lecturer abroad on State Department-sponsored tours, he was named cultural attache at the U.S. Embassy to Rome in 1953 at the urging of Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce.

Time magazine reported that his appointment combated "two of the standard Communist-propaganda charges against" the United States, "that 1) Americans are materialistic and cultureless, 2) the Negroes are downtrodden."

His appointment did not prevent condescending attitudes from occasionally emerging. According to a news attache at the embassy, one visiting congressman appeared to criticize Dr. Snowden for writing his doctoral thesis on slavery in the Roman Empire.

"Well, since you are a Negro, I suppose that was of special interest to you," the congressman said.

"Actually, my special interest was in the fact that nearly all of the slaves in ancient Rome were white," Dr. Snowden said.

The congressman stomped off.

Dr. Snowden was married to the former Elaine Hill, a high school art teacher, from 1935 until her death in 2005.

Survivors include two children, Jane Lepscky of Washington and Frank M. Snowden III of New Haven, Conn.; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.