Clyde Pharr

Background

Pharr was born in Evans Point, Texas, the son of Samuel Milton Pharr and Josephine Fleming Pharr.

Education

He attended Saltillo High School and earned Bachelor of Surgery and Bachelor of Arts degrees from East Texas Normal College (now Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University-Commerce) in 1903 and 1905, respectively. He was named an Abernathy Fellow at Yale and was granted his Doctor of Philosophy in 1910. Pharr subsequently studied at the University of Berlin and other European universities, as well as at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Career

After retiring from Vanderbilt, he was appointed Visiting Professor of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin in 1950, was named Research Professor there in 1952, and Emeritus Research Professor of Classics in 1966. He died in Austin on December 31, 1972. Pharr continued his education at Yale University, earning another Bachelor of Arts there in 1906.

Pharr"s first faculty appointment was as Assistant Professor of Latin and Greek at Ohio Wesleyan University, where he served from 1912 to 1917.

Pharr developed a national reputation through his textbooks for Greek and Latin, some of which remain in print. Later, he turned his attention to Roman law and was general editor of The Theodosian Code, the translation and publication of which proved to be a long and winding road.

However, the translation was well received. Pharr had intended to oversee the translation into English of "the entire body of Roman law," but various problems prevented him from bringing this project to fruition.

When he died in 1972, only the Codex Theodosianus translation and a volume of pre-Theodosian laws had been published.

Bibliography

"A Year or More of Greek," 13 Classical Journal 364 (1918). Homeric Greek (1920);available at. (Revised by John Wright, 1985)

"Ovid for Caesar," 21 Classical Journal 11 (1925).

Aeneid I-VI (1930).

(Reprinted with a new preface, 1998)

"The Interdiction of Magic in Roman Law," 63 Transactions of the American Philological Association 269 (1932). "Roman Legal Education" 34 Classical Journal 257 (1939). "The Text and Interpretation of the Theodosian Code, 6,4,21" 66 American Journal of Philology 50 (1945).

"A Thirteenth Century Formula of Anathema," 66 American Journal of Philology 135 (1945).

"The Text of Gratian"s Decretum, 2.32.4.5" 66 American Journal of Philology 255 (1945). "The Text and Interpretation of the Theodosian Code, 7,20,2" 67 American Journal of Philology16 (1946).

"A Project for the Translation of Roman Law," 42 Classical Journal" 141 (1946) (with Theresa South Davidson and Mary B Pharr). "Foreword: West.B. Owen & East.J. Goodspeed, Homeric Vocabularies.

Greek and English Wordlists for the Study of Homer (1969).

Connections

Friend:

Sam Rayburn