Peter Green (historian)
{{Short description|British historian and novelist (1924–2024)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2017}}
{{Use British English|date=April 2017}}
{{Sources|date=September 2024}}
{{Infobox military person
| name = Peter Green
| birth_date = {{birth date|1924|12|22|df=y}}
| birth_place = London, England
| death_date = {{death date and age|2024|9|16|1924|12|22|df=y}}
| death_place = Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.
| allegiance = United Kingdom
| spouse = {{marriage |Carin| |2015|end=d.}}
| children = 3; including Sarah
}}
Peter Morris Green (22 December 1924 – 16 September 2024) was an English classical scholar and novelist noted for his works on the Greco-Persian Wars, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age of ancient history, generally regarded as spanning the era from the death of Alexander in 323 BC up to either the date of the Battle of Actium or the death of Augustus in 14 AD.[http://www.cornellcollege.edu/classical_studies/amici/classicaliowa/greeninterview.shtml "Novelist, Critic, Translator, Historian: An Interview with Peter Green"], AMICI, Classical Association of Iowa.
Green's most famous books are Alexander of Macedon, a historical biography first issued in 1970, then in a revised and expanded edition in 1974, which was first published in the United States in 1991; his Alexander to Actium, a general account of the Hellenistic Age, and other works. He was the author of a translation of the Satires of the Roman poet Juvenal, now in its third edition. He also contributed poems to many journals, including to Arion and the Southern Humanities Review.
Early life and career
Green was born in London on 22 December 1924.[http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/green-peter-1924 "Green, Peter 1924–"], Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. Encyclopedia.com, retrieved 30 October 2017. He went to school at Charterhouse. During World War II, he served with the Royal Air Force in Burma. In Firpo's Bar in Calcutta, he met and became friendly with future novelist, Paul Scott, who later used elements of Green's character for the figure of Sergeant Guy Perron in The Raj Quartet.Hilary Spurling, Paul Scott: A Life. London: Hutchinson, 1990, pp. 144, 148.
After the war, Green attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he achieved a Double First in Classics, winning the Craven Scholarship and Studentship in 1950. He subsequently wrote historical novels and worked as a journalist, in the capacity of fiction critic for the Daily Telegraph (1953–63), book columnist for the Yorkshire Post (1961–62), television critic for The Listener (1962–63), film critic for John O'London's (1961–63), as well as contributing to other journals.
In 1963, he and his family moved to the Greek island of Lesbos, where he was a translator and independent scholar. In 1966 he moved to Athens, where he was recruited to teach classics for College Year in Athens, and published Armada from Athens, a study of the Sicilian Expedition of 415–3 BC (1970), and The Year of Salamis, a history of the Greco-Persian Wars (1971).
In 1971, Green was invited to teach at the University of Texas at Austin, where he became Dougherty Centennial Professor of Classics in 1982, emeritus from 1997. In 1986, he held the Mellon Chair of Humanities at Tulane University in New Orleans. He was last an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa and also has held visiting appointments at Princeton University and at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.
Bob Dylan used Green's translations of Ovid, found in The Erotic Poems (1982) and The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters (1994) as song lyrics on the albums Love and Theft (2001) and Modern Times (2006).David Yaffe, [https://books.google.com/books?id=73eAjOofhCAC&dq=%22Peter+green%22+bob+dylan&pg=PA27 "Bob Dylan and the Anglo-American tradition"], in Kevin J. H. Dettmar (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan, Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 27.David Yaffe, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2Ztkr4t-AtYC&dq=%22Peter+green%22+bob+dylan&pg=PA123 Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown], Yale University Press, 2011, p. 123.Richard F. Thomas, [https://books.google.com/books?id=d_6-KPi4V04C&q=%22Peter+green%22&pg=PA205 "Shadows are Falling: Virgil, Radnóti, and Dylan"], in Michael Paschalis (ed.), Pastoral Palimpsests: Essays in the Reception of Theocritus and Virgil, Rethymnon Classical Studies, Vol. 3, 2007, Crete University Press, p. 205.Richard F. Thomas,
[http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/22i/Thomas.pdf "The Streets of Rome: The Classical Dylan"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120711032525/http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/22i/Thomas.pdf |date=11 July 2012 }}, Oral Tradition, 22/1 (2007; 30–56), pp. 35–37.[https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/persephone/interview-richard-thomas-bob-dylan-and-classics "An Interview with Richard Thomas on Bob Dylan and the Classics"], Persephone: The Harvard Undergraduate Classics Journal, Spring 2017, Vol. 2, No. 1.
Green was a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.[http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/peter-green/ Peter Green] at New York Review of Books.
At the time of his death, Green was working with [https://anthropology.uiowa.edu/people/glenn-storey Glenn Storey] on a new translation of the works of Herodotus with full commentaries. That work is expected to be published in 2025.
Personal life and death
In 1954, Green married Lalage Isobel Pulvertaft, a novelist and Egyptologist. They had three children, including Sarah Green.
Green's second marriage was to classicist and ancient historian Carin M. C. Green, who died in 2015.Obituary: [http://hosting-3320.tributes.com/obituary/show/Carin-M.-Green-102628237 "Professor Carin M. Green March 30, 1948 - July 2, 2015 Iowa City, Iowa".]
Peter Green died in Iowa City on 16 September 2024, at the age of 99.{{cite web |last1=Finamore |first1=John |title=In Memoriam: Dr. Peter Green |url=https://classics.uiowa.edu/news/2024/09/memoriam-dr-peter-green |website=Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |access-date=19 September 2024 |date=18 September 2024}}
Bibliography
{{Expand list|date=September 2018}}
- [https://www.scribd.com/doc/15757434/The-Expanding-EyeThe Expanding Eye - A First Journey To The Mediterranean] (1952) Illustrated with photographs.
- Habeas Corpus And Other Stories (1954) (eight short stories)
- Achilles His Armour (1955) (historical novel about Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War).
- Cat in Gloves (Under pseudonym Denis Delaney) (1956), Gryphon Books
- The Sword of Pleasure (1957) (fictional memoirs of Sulla)
- Kenneth Grahame: A Biography: The Dramatic and Human Story of the Fascinating and Complex Man Who Wrote The Wind in the Willows (1959)
- Writers & their Work - Sir Thomas Browne (1959), Longman for The British Council
- Writers & their Work - John Skelton (1960), Longman for the British Council
- Essays in Antiquity (1960)
- Destiny of Fire by Zoe Oldenbourg (translation of Les Brûlés) (1961)
- Massacre at Montségur by Zoe Oldenbourg (translation of Le Bûcher de Montségur) (1961)
- The Life of Jesus by Jean Steinmann (translation) (1963)
- The Laughter of Aphrodite: A Novel About Sappho of Lesbos (1965)
- The Sixteen Satires by Juvenal (translation) (1967)
- The Year of Salamis, 480-479 BC (1970) (UK) = Xerxes at Salamis (1970) (USA)
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=XH-ZHgAACAAJ Alexander the Great] (1970)
- Armada from Athens (1970)
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=HEz_AAAACAAJ The Shadow of the Parthenon: Studies in Ancient History and Literature] (1972)
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=heyfAAAACAAJ The Parthenon] (1973)
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZNmcAAAACAAJ A Concise History of Ancient Greece to the Close of the Classical Era] (1973)
- Alexander of Macedon, 356–323 B.C.; A Historical Biography (1974; re-issue in U.S., 1991, as indicated below){{cite book|author=Peter Green|title=Alexander of Macedon, 356–323 B.C.: A Historical Biography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SYo6c1iEL_4C|date=8 January 2013|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-95469-4}}
- Ancient Greece: An Illustrated History (1979)
- Ovid: The Erotic Poems (1982)
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=uXuUPPhxZIIC Classical Bearings: Interpreting Ancient History and Culture] (1989)
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=1QOvJ14Jxv8C Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age] (1990)
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=XMZwk_I-fRMC Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography] (1991)
- Ovid: The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters (1994)
- The Argonautika by Apollonios Rhodios (translation) (1997)
- The Greco-Persian Wars (1996) (update of The Year of Salamis)
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=ROX7f6UwdI8C From Ikaria to the Stars: Classical Mythification, Ancient and Modern] (2004)
- The Poems of Catullus (2005)
- Diodorus Siculus, Books 11–12.37.1 : Greek history 480–431 B.C.—the Alternative Version, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2006.
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=1bUnHwAACAAJ Alexander The Great and the Hellenistic Age] (2007)
- [https://books.google.com/books?id=HPV6v52mGf0C The Hellenistic Age: A Short History] (2007)
- The Iliad by Homer (translation) (2015)
- The Odyssey by Homer (translation) (2018)
=Book reviews=
| class='wikitable sortable' width='90%' |
| |Year
!class='unsortable'|Review article !class='unsortable'|Work(s) reviewed |
|---|
| 2007
|{{cite journal |date=June 28, 2007 |URL=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2007/06/28/the-women-and-the-gods/ |title=The Women and the Gods |journal=The New York Review of Books |volume=54 |issue=11 |pages=32–35}} |{{cite book |author=Connelly, Joan Breton |authorlink=Joan Breton Connelly |title=Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece |location=Princeton, N.J. |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2007 }} |
=Critical studies and reviews of Green's work=
;The Odyssey (2018)
- {{cite journal |author=Burrow, Colin |date=26 April 2018 |title=Light through the fog |journal=London Review of Books |volume=40 |issue=8 |pages=3–7 |url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n08/colin-burrow/light-through-the-fog }}
Notes
{{Reflist|30em}}
External links
{{Wikiquote|Peter Green}}
- {{OL author|OL145392A}}
- [http://www.cornellcollege.edu/classical_studies/amici/classicaliowa/greeninterview.shtml 2003 interview, with picture]
- List of Green's [http://www.nybooks.com/authors/374 contributions] to The New York Review of Books
- List of Green's [http://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/peter-green contributions] to the London Review of Books
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Green, Peter}}
Category:20th-century British translators
Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Category:British classical scholars
Category:British expatriates in British Burma
Category:British expatriates in the United States
Category:Classical scholars of the University of Texas at Austin
Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
Category:Greek–English translators
Category:Latin–English translators
Category:London Review of Books people
Category:Royal Air Force personnel of World War II