Herbert Weir Smyth

Herbert Weir Smyth (born August 8, 1857 in Wilmington, Delaware , † July 16, 1937 in Bar Harbor ) was an American classical philologist .

Life

Herbert Weir Smyth, the son of an iron manufacturer, studied Classical Philology at Swarthmore College and went to Harvard University after the bachelor's examination (1876) . There he was shaped by William Watson Goodwin , one of the most prominent philologists in the USA at the time. He advised Smyth to deepen his studies at German universities, which at the time were considered to be the world's leading educational institutions for classical studies. In 1879 Smyth went to the University of Leipzig and in 1881 to the University of Göttingen , where he received his doctorate in 1884 with a dissertation written in German .

After returning to the United States, Smyth first taught classical philology, German and Sanskrit in high schools, served as treasurer of the American Philological Association (1884-1904) and was a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in 1885 , where he approached Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve . In 1888 he was appointed Associate Professor at Bryn Mawr College and in 1893 appointed Professor of Greek . From 1899 to 1900 he was visiting professor at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens .

In 1901 Smyth was appointed Professor of Greek at Harvard University, where he worked for a few years alongside his former teacher Goodwin. In 1902 he became Eliot Professor of Greek Litterature , in 1904 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 1904/1905 he was President of the American Philological Association, 1922/1923 Sather Professor . In 1925 he retired.

Smyth was the best expert on Greek in his day and wrote fundamental works on Greek grammar, phonology and dialectology. At the beginning he mainly dealt with the Homeric epics, from there he came to the archaic lyric poets and from these to the tragedy poet Aeschylus , whose language and tradition he dealt intensively with. As a fruit of his work he brought out an annotated text edition in two volumes in 1922 and 1926 ( Loeb Classical Library ), which was revised in 1957 by Hugh Lloyd-Jones .

literature

• Ward W. Briggs : Smyth, Herbert Weir . In: Ward W. Briggs (Ed.): Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists. Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 1994, ISBN 0-313-24560-6 , pp. 602-604.

Web links

• Entry on Herbert Weir Smyth in the Database of Classical Scholars (English)
• Literature by and about Herbert Weir Smyth in the WorldCat bibliographic database