Herbert Weir Smyth
Herbert Weir Smyth ( born August 8, 1857 in Wilmington, Delaware; † July 16, 1937 in Bar Harbor) was an American classical philologist.
Life
Herbert Weir Smyth, the son of an iron master, studied classics at Swarthmore College and went to the Bachelor's examination (1876 ) at Harvard University. There coined him William Watson Goodwin, in his time one of the most prominent philologists in the USA. He advised Smyth to deepen his studies at German universities, which were at that time the world's leading training centers for archeology. So Smyth went in 1879 to the University of Leipzig and in 1881 further to the University of Göttingen, where he started in 1884 his doctorate with a dissertation written in German.
After his return to the U.S. Smyth taught first Classical Philology, German and Sanskrit at secondary schools, acted as treasurer of the American Philological Association (1884-1904) and in 1885 professor at the Johns Hopkins University, where he stepped closer Basil Gildersleeve Lanneau. In 1888 he was appointed as an associate professor at Bryn Mawr College, and appointed in 1893 professor of Greek. From 1899 to 1900 he was a visiting professor at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
1901 Smyth was appointed professor of Greek at Harvard University, where he still worked alongside his former teacher Goodwin few years. In 1902, he was Eliot Professor of Greek Litterature, 1904/1905 president of the American Philological Association, 1922/1923 Sather Professor. In 1925 he retired.
Smyth was in his time the best connoisseurs of Greek and wrote the fundamental work on Greek grammar, phonology and dialectology. He studied at the beginning mainly with the Homeric epics, which came to the archaic lyric poets, and from these to the tragic poet Aeschylus, with its language and tradition history, it discussed. As a fruit of his labor, he brought in 1922 and 1926, an annotated text edition in two volumes out ( Loeb Classical Library ), which was revised by Hugh Lloyd -Jones 1957.