Richard Broxton Onians

Richard Broxton Onians (born January 11, 1899 in Liverpool , † May 21, 1986 ) was a British classical scholar .

Life

Onians served during the First World War from 1917 to 1918 and then studied classics at the University of Liverpool . After graduating with first class honors he received in 1922 a research fellowship at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge . From 1925 to 1933 he was lecturer at the University of Liverpool, from 1933 to 1935 professor of classics at the University of Wales , in 1936 he was appointed Hildred Carlile Professor of Latin at the University of London . In 1966 he retired.

Onians was a board member of the Association of University Teachers from 1946 to 1953 and a member of its executive committee from 1946 to 1951.

Onians had been married to Rosalind Lathbury since 1935. They had two sons and four daughters.

The Origins of European Thought

Onians' main work, The Origins of European Thought , emerged from his dissertation, for which he was awarded the Hare Prize in 1926 . One condition for the award was that the dissertation was to be published by 1929. Onians was able to negotiate an extension and in 1935 delivered a first version to Cambridge University Press , which was expanded in the flags in 1937. However, the book was only published in a heavily revised and expanded version in 1951 and expanded again in 1954.

In this work Onians elaborates the Greco-Roman (in the second edition also basic Jewish and Christian) ideas of the body , the soul , the world , time and fate . Even though not all of Onian's statements were convincing, the work remains a valuable research tool to the present day. The translations into French and Russian published almost 50 years later bear witness to this.

Apart from this major work, Onians published very little.

Fonts (selection)

Unpublished first edition

• Origins of Greek and Roman Thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1935. 424 Ss. - Corrected proofs, available in the British Library .
• Origins of Greek & Roman Thought, mainly concerning the body, the mind, the soul and fate. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1937, viii, 456 Ss. - Revised proofs, available in the British Library.

Published second edition

• The Origins of European Thought, about the body, the mind, the soul, the world, time and fate. New interpretations of Greek, Roman, and kindred evidence, also of some basic Jewish and Christian beliefs. Second edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1951, xvii, 547 pp .; extended reprint 1954, xviii, 583 pp .; as paperback in 1988 and more often, online (PDF; 30.5 MB). - Another reprint under the shortened title: The origins of European thought. New York, Arno Press, 1973.

Translations

• French translation: Les origines de la pensée européenne. Sur le corps, l'esprit, l'âme, le monde, le temps et le destin. Traduction de l'anglais by Barbara Cassin , Armelle Debru and Michel Narcy . Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1999 (Collection "L'ordre philosophique"), 656 pp. - Review by: Catherine Collobert, in: Dialogue 41.1, 2002, 169–171, online .
• Russian translation: Р.Б. Онианс, На коленях богов. Истоки европейской мысли о душе, разуме, теле, времени, мире и судьбе . пер. с англ. Л.Б.Сумм. М .: Прогресс-Традиция, 1999.
• Italian translation: Le origini del pensiero europeo. Intorno al corpo, la mente, l'anima, il mondo, il tempo, il destino , traduzione di P. Zaninoni, a cura di L. Perilli, Collana Il ramo d'oro, Milano, Adelphi, 1998.

literature

• Obituary, in: The Times , May 31, 1986.
• Ann LT Bergren: The Etymology and Usage of Peirar in Early Greek Poetry: A Study in the Interrelationship of Metrics, Linguistics and Poetics. State College, Pa: American Philological Association, 1975, Appendix A: RB Onians' Analysis of peirar in early Greek poetry .

Web links

• Writings by Richard Broxton Onians in the British Library catalog