Versnel was born in
Rotterdam on 10 October 1936. After being educated at the
Gymnasium Erasmianum in Rotterdam, he studied classics at
Leiden University, obtaining the
kandidaats (BA) in 1959 and the
doctoraal (MA) in 1962. He then worked as a schoolteacher in Rotterdam, teaching Greek and Latin at the from 1962 to 1970 and at the Gymnasium Erasmianum from 1970 to 1971. During this period, he also held a temporary research position at Leiden in 1967, and from 1968 carried out a project on the
Roman triumph for which the
Dutch Research Council had awarded funding. He defended his doctoral thesis on this topic in 1970, which was published as his first book,
Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph. In 1971, he was appointed as an assistant professor in the History department at Leiden, becoming a
lector in 1978 and a full professor in 1980. This was then followed by a second volume in 1993, containing a discussion of theories of myth and ritual, along with studies of the
Kronia and
Saturnalia festivals, of the
Thesmophoria and
Bona Dea festivals, and of the gods
Apollo and
Mars. His doctoral students at Leiden included
Josine Blok. In 1994 Versnel became professor
ordinarius and the chair of the Ancient History section of the department, and in 1997 he was made a member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1998–1999, he held the
Sather Professorship of Classical Literature at the
University of California, Berkeley. A revised version of his Sather Lectures, dealing with ancient Greek conceptions of the gods, was published in 2011 as
Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology. He retired from his Leiden professorship in 2000. In 2005, he was made an honorary doctor of the
University of Heidelberg. In 2021, he was made a Knight of the
Order of the Netherlands Lion. He died in
Leiderdorp on 7 February 2025, the day on which Leiden University celebrated its 450th anniversary. ==Selected publications==