Bernadotte Perrin

Bernadotte Perrin (born September 15, 1847 in Goshen , Connecticut , † August 31, 1920 in Saratoga , New York ) was an American classical philologist . He was a professor at Yale University from 1893 to 1909 and is best known as a translator of the Plutarch -Vites.

Life

Bernadotte Perrin, the son of the congregational preacher Lavalette Perrin (1816–1889) and his wife Ann Eliza nee. Comstock studied Classical Philology and English Literature at Yale University , earned a bachelor's degree in 1869 and then taught for a year at Hartford, Connecticut High School . From 1870 to 1871 he continued his studies at Yale Divinity School . In 1873 he was at Yale with a thesis on the Greek tragedy for Ph. D. doctorate . He then taught Greek as a tutor at Yale for a year . In 1874 he returned to Hartford as assistant principal , but after only two years he interrupted his work again and deepened his studies in Germany at the universities of Tübingen , Leipzig and Berlin .

Upon his return, Perrin continued to teach at Hartford and Yale. In 1881 he left the school service and went to the Adelbert College of the Western Reserve University in Cleveland , Ohio . There he worked for twelve years as Professor of Greek. In 1893 he received an honorary doctorate from this university (LL. D.). In the same year he moved to Yale University as Professor of Greek. In 1901 he was appointed Lampson Professor of Greek Literature and History there. From 1898 to 1908 he was also a public orator at Yale University and in 1896/1897 president of the American Philological Association . In 1909 he retired. His chair was divided into a chair in Greek studies , which Thomas Dwight Goodell took, and a chair in Latin studies , which George Lincoln Hendrickson took. In 1915 Perrin was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Perrin's research included both Greek and Latin literature. He published numerous individual studies on ancient rhetoric, religion and military history as well as translations of ancient texts. His most important work is the eleven-volume translation of the Plutarch vites in the Loeb Classical Library (1914–1926), which has been reprinted several times since it was first published.

Bernadotte Perrin was married to Luella Perrin, a second cousin, from 1881. After her death in 1889, he married Susan Lester for the second time in 1892. After Perrin's death in 1920, his widow donated his fortune to the Bernadotte Perrin Fund for the Yale University Library in 1926 . The fund is used to purchase books on Greek literature, history and archeology.

Fonts (selection)

• C. Iulii Caesaris De bello civili. Caesar's Civil War . New York 1882
• Homer's Odyssey Books I – IV . Boston 1889
• Homer's Odyssey Books V – VIII . Boston 1894
• with Thomas Day Seymour : Eight Books of Homer's Odyssey . Boston / London 1897
• with Thomas Day Seymour: Four Books of Homer's Odyssey . Boston / London 1897
• Greek Dramas by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes . New York 1900
• Plutarch's Themistocles and Aristides . New York 1901
• Plutarch's Cimon and Pericles with the Funeral Oration of Pericles . New York 1910
• Plutarch's Nicias and Alcibiades . New York 1912
• Plutarch's Lives . 11 volumes, Cambridge (Massachusetts) / London 1914–1926 ( Loeb Classical Library 46–47, 65, 80, 87, 98–103)

literature

• Edward Parmelee Morris : Bernadotte Perrin 1847–1920 . In: American Journal of Philology . Volume 41 (1920), pp. 405f.
• Harry Mortimer Hubbell : Perrin, Bernadotte . In: Dictionary of American Biography . Volume 14 (1934), pp. 478f.
• Ward W. Briggs : Perrin, Bernadotte . In: Derselbe (ed.): Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists . Westport, CT / London: Greenwood Press 1994, ISBN 978-0-313-24560-2 , pp. 493f.

Web links

• Entry on Bernadotte Perrin in the Database of Classical Scholars (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biographical Sketch Bernadotte Perrin, BA 1869. in the Yale Finding Aid Database