Philip Vellacott

Background

He was born at Grays, Essex and educated at Street Paul"s School, London and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he took a double first in the Classics Tripos.

Education

lieutenant was during his time as a teacher that he completed most of his Penguin Books classical translations centred on the works of Aeschylus, Euripides and Theophrastus.

Career

During the 1930s, he taught at Liverpool University, and schools including Dulwich College, London. He carried on teaching through the Second World War, as he was a conscientious objector. Apart from the quality of his translations, his lucid introductions to ancient Greek theatre and the plays he translated gave a sense of time, place, history and legend, as well as the tragedy and humour within each play, and the many skills employed by the playwright.

Two particular insights stand out in the face of other critical appraisers of Euripides over the centuries: His appreciation of the playwright"s persistent and often subtle use of irony, and his understanding of Euripides" formidable and equally subtle defence of women in the male-dominated world of ancient Greece - a world not dissimilar to the one in which Vellacott was brought up.

In that sense, he was very much a man before his time. Vellacott lectured on Greek drama on 4 tours in the United States of America and spent time as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

He retired in 1967 to Radnorshire, where he carried on writing until his death in 1997.

Works

• book

  • Ordinary Latin