Benjamin Oliver Foster

Benjamin Foster is a redirect to this article. For other people, see Ben Foster .

Benjamin Oliver Foster (born August 13, 1872 in Bangor, Maine , † June 22, 1938 in Palo Alto ) was an American classical philologist .

Life

Benjamin Oliver Foster, the son of a doctor, studied at the young Stanford University from 1892 ( BA 1895). For his graduate studies , he went to Harvard University , where he in 1897 the Master degree reached and 1899 with a dissertation on ancient Latin morphology doctorate was. He then received the Parker Fellowship, which enabled him to spend a year at the American School of Classical Studies in Rome .

Upon his return, Foster initially worked as an acting professor at the Normal College of Michigan . After a year (1901) he received a teaching position ( instructor ) at Stanford University, where he spent the rest of his career. He was appointed Assistant Professor in 1905 and Associate Professor in 1910. After a visiting professorship at the University of Chicago (1925/1926) he was appointed full professor . After a year as President of the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast (1932/1933), he was appointed Chair of the Department of Greek and Latin . In 1937 he retired .

Foster had been visiting professor at the nearby University of Berkeley in 1908 and 1913. For the year 1937/1938, the first year of his retirement, he was invited as a Sather Professor , but could not accept the call for health reasons. He died on June 22, 1938 at the age of 65.

In teaching and research, Foster was particularly concerned with Roman literature and history, which he dealt with from the Republic to the late Imperial period . His main work is a bilingual edition of the history of Livy in the Loeb Classical Library . Foster edited the first five of the 14 volumes, which comprised books 1–22. As a text basis, he chose the Berlin edition by Wilhelm Weißenborn and Hermann Johannes Müller (1844-1912) and the Oxford edition by Robert Seymour Conway (1864-1933) and William Charles Flamstead Walters (1859-1927).

Foster's translation was widely recognized. The fifth volume, to which Foster (which was unusual at the time) added several cards and a detailed bibliography, received particular praise.

Fonts (selection)

• Livy / Livy. From urbe condita . Five volumes, New York / London 1919–1929 (numerous reprints)

literature

• Mortimer Chambers : Foster, Benjamin Oliver . In: Ward W. Briggs (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists , Westport, CT / London: Greenwood Press 1994, ISBN 978-0-313245-60-2 , p. 192.

Web links

• Entry on Benjamin Oliver Foster in the Database of Classical Scholars (English)