Harold A. Drake  Harold A. Drake (1942–present) is an American scholar of Ancient Roman history, with an emphasis on late antiquity. Born in Southern California in 1942, Drake attended North Hollywood High School. He discussed the possibility of a career as a comedian with Jerry Lewis, but then decided to study journalism and history at the University of Southern California as an undergraduate where he was editor-in-chief of the "Daily Trojan" from 1962 to 1963. At USC he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Although he impressed Professor Thomas Africa with his performance in Roman history classes, Drake initially decided to seek a career in journalism after graduation and worked as a reported for United Press International. He then pursued graduate study in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he wrote a master's thesis on “The Great Vaccination Campaign: How Public Opinion was used in Early Modern Britain” in 1966. He then shifted his interest in policy history to ancient history and wrote his doctoral dissertation entitled “Semper victor eris: Evidence for the Policy and Belief of Constantine I contained in Eusebius' Tricennial oration” (directed by Professor Charles Farwell Edson, Jr.). While conducting research at the American Academy in Rome, Drake accepted an instructor position at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1970, where he joined Frank J. Frost as the ancient history faculty (working his way from temporary lecturer to full professor). Through the course of his long career at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Drake was noted for his teaching and mentoring skills. He was awarded the UCSB Associated Students’ Outstanding Teacher Award in both 1973 and 1974. Drake was awarded the Harold J. Plous Award for outstanding Assistant Professor in the 1976–1977 Academic Year by the Faculty Executive Committee of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1996, Drake was given a teaching award by the Alumni Association of the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2006, he was awarded the outstanding Graduate Mentorship Award by the Academic Senate of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Drake also served as History Department Chair at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1987 to 1990. Drake continues an active scholarly agenda in the study of the later Roman Empire, especially focusing on Constantine and Church-State Relations in the fourth century CE. He was awarded a Membership of the faculty for Historical Studies at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University for 1976–1977. He was awarded a fellowship from the Annenberg Research Institute in 1991 to support his research on Intolerance in the Roman Empire.