Background
He was born on August 8, 1857 in Wilmington, Delaware, United States. He was the first of four children of Clement Biddle Smyth, a well-to-do Quaker iron manufacturer, and Sarah Ann (Sellers) Smyth.
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He was born on August 8, 1857 in Wilmington, Delaware, United States. He was the first of four children of Clement Biddle Smyth, a well-to-do Quaker iron manufacturer, and Sarah Ann (Sellers) Smyth.
Herbert attended Taylor and Jackson's school in Wilmington, and when fifteen entered Swarthmore College, where he took an active part in baseball and graduated in 1876 at the head of his class. In his junior year his interest in the study of Greek was aroused by reading Pope's Iliad. From 1876 to 1878 he studied at Harvard, receiving there a second A. B. degree (1878).
After teaching the classics for a year at a private school in Newport, Smyth spent two years at the University of Leipzig and two at the University of Gottingen. From 1883 to 1885 he was instructor in the classics, German, and Sanskrit at Williams College, and from 1885 to 1888 he served as lecturer and reader in Greek at the Johns Hopkins University. Thereafter, from 1888 to 1901, he was associate in Greek and Latin and later professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr College, with interruptions in 1892 to teach at the University of California and in 1899-1900 as professor of Greek in the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.
From Bryn Mawr he went in 1901 to Harvard as professor of Greek and in the following year succeeded his teacher, William Watson Goodwin, as Eliot Professor of Greek Literature, a chair he filled till his retirement in 1925.
His earlier works were primarily grammatical: his dissertation on the diphthong EI (1884), his articles "The Reduction of EI to I in Homer" (1885) and his monumental monograph The Sounds and Inflections of the Greek Dialects: Ionic (1894) - these are technical works primarily for mature scholars.
Having completed the editorship of some twenty volumes of the American Book Company's Greek Series for Colleges and Schools, he was concentrating at the time of his death upon a study of Aeschylus. His death followed a painful illness and an operation at the Bar Harbor Hospital, near his summer home at Seal Harbor, Maine, and interment took place at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.
Herbert Weir Smyth was editor of the Greek Series for Colleges and Schools (20 volumes). His Beginner's Greek Book, Greek Grammar for Schools, and Greek Grammar for Colleges - the most complete Greek grammar ever published in America. Perhaps his best-known work - "Aspects of Greek Conservatism" and an article on 148 manuscripts of Aeschylus.
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Quotations: "Without an exact knowledge of the language there can be no thorough appreciation of the literature of Ancient Greece or of any other land. "
Smyth was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Egypt Exploration Society, and the American Philological Association.
As a teacher Smyth was stimulating and challenging. Olympian in aspect, he was yet kindly and helpful to students. His written style was direct and lucid, condensing long philosophic reflection into rather aphoristic form, meaty in content, and, like his teaching, demanding (and rewarding) the keen attention of his readers.
On December 20, 1887, Smyth married Eleanor Adt at Baltimore, their children being Raymond Weir, Gladys Weir, Evelyn Weir, and Eirene Weir.
