Born in South Boston on December 20, 1871, Rand was the only son of an established New England family that otherwise consisted of four daughters.

Aimless, he spent three years tutoring fellow students and teaching at a summer school in Maine before finally being invited to join the Classics faculty as a resident scholar at the University of Chicago, where he was allowed to lecture on topics concerning the Middle Ages.

[6] After traveling through Europe and arriving to study at Munich in 1898, it was there that Rand came under the influence of a number of prominent professors—most notably Ludwig Traube, the granduncle of Eduard Fraenkel—that shaped his postgraduate education.

[11] In the spring of next year, he married Belle Brent Palmer—a native of Kentucky—and later returned to Harvard to assume a position as a Latin instructor.

[4] Following his arrival to Harvard in 1901 to teach Latin, Rand gradually rose to the position of assistant professor and, eventually, received a full professorship in 1909.

[19] At Harvard, Rand spent much of his time writing reviews and articles in academic journals, later succeeding his colleague Clifford Herschel Moore as the Pope Professor in 1931.

[20] Having delivered presidential and Phi Beta Kappa addresses at the university, he developed a reputation as a skilled orator and rhetorician.

[12] Following his death, the University of Paris awarded him its first post-war honorary doctorate (rentrée solennelle) for his work as a scholar.