Martin Ferguson Smith

Martin Ferguson Smith

Martin Ferguson Smith OBE , MA , MLitt , LittD (Dublin), FSA , FRGS (born April 26,  1940 ) is an Irish classical philologist , epigraphist and historian of philosophy (edition philologist).

Martin Ferguson Smith, who obtained his Master of Letters from DEW Wormell at the University of Dublin with a thesis on Lucretius: The Man and his Mission , was Professor of Classics in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham from 1988 to 1995 . He has been an emeritus professor since 1995 and lives on Foula , an island in the Shetlands .

Smith is an internationally known and recognized editor and translator of Lucretius . He has revised the edition by William Henry Denham Rouse in the Loeb Classical Library and published his own translation of Lucretius.

Smith is also the discoverer and editor of considerable parts of the Greek inscription which the Epicurean philosopher Diogenes of Oinoanda had installed in his hometown of Oinoanda in the mountains of Lycia in the 2nd century AD (first parts were discovered in 1884 and published in 1892). The results have been published in four books and numerous articles. After his retirement he worked with Jürgen Hammerstaedt from the University of Cologne on the further excavation and reconstruction of the inscription.

In recent years, Smith has studied the writers Rose Macaulay , Virginia Woolf, and Dorothy L. Sayers, and the artists Helen and Roger Fry .

Awards

In 2004 he was awarded the international Theodor Mommsen Prize for Herculaneum papyrology. In 2007 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire 'for Achievement in Service to Science'.

Fonts (selection)

Annotated editions of Lucretius with translation

• Lucretius, On the nature of things. Translated, with introduction and notes, by Martin Ferguson Smith. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis / Cambridge 1969, revised edition 2001, (excerpts online) . - (prose translation) - Review by: Robert Todd, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 02.08.2002
• Lucretius, De rerum natura. With an English Translation by WHD Rouse (first 1924). Revised by Martin Ferguson Smith. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma., London 1975, second edition 1982, reprinted with revisions 1992 (Loeb Classical Library 181).

Annotated editions of Diogenes von Oinonanda with translation and supplementary volumes

• Diogenes of Oinoanda: The Epicurean inscription . Edited with introduction, translation, and notes by Martin Ferguson Smith. Naples 1993. ISBN 88-7088-270-5 (Latest and scientifically leading edition of the Greek text)
• Diogenes of Oinoanda: The Epicurean inscription. Supplement. Edited with introduction, translation, and notes by Martin Ferguson Smith. Naples 2003. ISBN 88-7088-441-4
• Martin Ferguson Smith: The philosophical inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda . (Tituli Asiae minoris. Supplementary volumes. Volume 20). Vienna 1996. ISBN 3-7001-2596-8
• Jürgen Hammerstaedt, Martin Ferguson Smith: The Epicurean inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda. Ten years of new discoveries and research. Habelt, Bonn 2014. - Review by: Holger Essler, (online) ; Tiziano Dorandi, (online) .

English literature

• Dearest Jean. Rose Macaulay's letters to a cousin. Manchester University Press, 2011.
• Virginia Woolf's second visit to Greece. In: English Studies 92, Issue 1, 2011, 55-83.
• Sayers and the Somersham Pageant. In: SEVEN. An Anglo-American literary review 28, 2011.

Web links

• Literature by and about Martin Ferguson Smith in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Personal page in the Department of Classics and Ancient History, Durham University