Nikola Vulić

Nikola Vulić (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Вулић); (Shkodër, Ottoman Empire, 27 November 1872 – Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 25 May 1945) was a Serbian historian, classical philologist, prominent archaeologist, doctor of philosophy and professor at the University of Belgrade. His new critical approach to archeological sources and strict methodology have made him a paragon for the forthcoming generations of researchers. In Serbia the pioneer in archeology and Illyriology was Mihailo Valtrović, but there was no widespread activity until Nikola Vulić appeared, and brought important results in the half of the nineteenth century.

Biography

Born in Scutari in 1872 during the period of Ottoman rule, he left for Serbia where he studied Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Ancient Greek, and ancient history. He graduated from the University of Belgrade in history. For his post-graduate studies he went to the University of Munich, where he received his doctorate. Upon his return to Belgrade, he was named professor at his alma mater. During World War I, Serbia's Minister of Education in-exile in Greece concluded that professors and teachers should be seconded from the army. Nikola Vulić was exempt from further serving in the army in 1917. In Clermont-Ferrand he taught Latin to both Serb and French students but as he himself said, he spent part of his classes teaching French students, the history of Serbia in ancient times. Moreover, he gave free public lectures every Tuesday at a museum to anyone that was interested.

He is remembered as the translator of Aeneid by Virgil in 1907-1908.

Excavations

Stobi was by far the largest projects in southern Yugoslavia (now North Macedonia) in the period between World War I and World War II and also one of the largest projects of Serbian archeology at that time, and very soon attracted the attention of foreign scholars and researchers. Particularly active was Nikola Vulić, professor of ancient history at the University of Belgrade, who extensively studied pre-Roman and Roman periods of the central Balkans (epigraphy, ethnic structure, Romanization process) and contributed a series of essential papers on these topics in national and international literature (in Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft and Dizionario epigrafico di antichità romane). Probably the most renowned site Vulić researched was that of Trebeništa in the Ohrid Lake area, where he excavated a late prehistoric cemetery between 1930 and 1934 and found two golden masks dated to mid-first millennium BC. Other Vulić's archeological research included also the excavation (1925) of the theatre at Scupi, the Roman town established in the first century AD, and Heraclea Lyncestis in Bitola, a town founded in the fourth century BC.

References

• Translated and adapted from Serbian Wikipedia:Nikola Vulić