• Date of Birth: May 04, 1833
  • Born City: Portland
  • Born State/Country: ME
  • Parents: James & Catherine G.
  • Date of Death: October 11, 1901
  • Death City: Cambridge
  • Death State/Country: MA
  • Married: Mary Battey Ketchum, 26 Nov. 1860; Harriet Sweetser Jenks, 21 Dec. 1895.
  • Education:

    A.B. Harvard, 1856.

  • Professional Experience:

    Lawyer, 1856-65; tutor to prof. Lat. Harvard, 1865-1901.

  • Publications:

    Analysis of the Latin Subjunctive (Cambridge, 1870); review of Delbruck's Conjunctiv und Optativ, North American Review 113 (1871) 415-27; “On Some Forms of Conditional Sentences in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit,” TAPA 2 (1871) 159-65; review of Roby's Latin Grammar, North American Review 114 (1872) 218-22; review of Whitney's Oriental and Linguistic Studies, North American Review 116 (1873) 176-80; The Queen of Hearts. A Dramatic Fantasia (Cambridge, 1875); “The Blackbirds. Comedietta” Atlantic Monthly 39 (1877) 31-43; The Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics of Virgil (Boston, 1881); The Greater Poems of Virgil, vol. 1 (Boston, 1881); vol. 2 (Boston, 1883) (2d ed. of both, 1895); The Satires and Epistles of Horace (Boston, 1887); “The Fauces of the Roman House,” HSCP 1 (1890) 1-12; “Some Latin Etymologies,” ibid., 93-105; “Some Uses of neque (nec) in Latin,” HSCP 2 (1891) 129-41; Livy, Books I and II (Boston, 1891); Eutropius: Selections from the History of Rome (Boston, 1892); “Accentual Rhythm in Latin,” HSCP 4 (1893) 105-15; Livy. Books XXI and XXII, ed. with Tracy Peck (Boston, 1893); “Early Latin Prosody,” HSCP 5 (1894) 57-71; “Some Features of the Contrary to Fact Construction,” HSCP 7 (1896) 13-20; Allen and Greenough's Shorter Latin Grammar for Schools and Academies, with the assistance of Albert A. Howard (Boston, 1896); “Memoir of Frederic DeForest Allen,” HSCP 9 (1898) 27-36; “Some Questions in Latin Stem Formations,” HSCP 10 (1899) 1-17; “The Religious Condition of the Greeks at the Time of the New Comedy,” HSCP 10 (1899) 141-80; Second Year Latin, with B. L. D'Ooge and M. Grant Daniell (Boston, 1899); Words and Their Ways in English Speech, with G. L. Kittredge (New York, 1901; London, 1902); “Some Ellipsis in Some Latin Constructions,” HSCP 12 (1901) 1-5; Select Letters and Orations of Cicero (Allen and Greenough's edition, Boston, 1897), rev. with G. L. Kittredge (Boston, 1902).With J. H. Allen: A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges (Boston, 1872; 4th ed. with supplement, 1874; rev. ed., 1877; rev. and enlarged with G. L. Kittredge, 1888); Latin Composition (Boston, 1875); A Method of Instruction in Latin (Boston, 1875).Edited with J. H. and W. F. Allen: Cicero. De Senectute (Boston, 1873); Select Orations of Cicero (Boston, 1873; rev. ed., 1886; rev. with Kittredge, 1896); The Conspiracy of Catiline as Related by Sallust (Boston, 1873; rev. with M. Grant Daniell, 1901); De Bello Gallico. Caesar's Gallic War (Boston, 1874); The Poems of Virgil, vol. 1 (Boston, 1874); Selections from the Poems of Ovid, Chiefly the Metamorphoses (Boston, 1875; rev. by H. N. Fowler, 1890).

  • Notes:

    James Bradstreet Greenough was among the first to teach Sanskrit and comparative philology in the United States. He was the founder of HSCP and had a leading role in the organization of the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women that led to the establishment of Radcliffe College. He was a tireless scholar from 1870 to 1901, though most of his books were school textbooks, editions of Caesar, Sallust, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Livy, and Ovid. Of fundamental importance was his study of the Latin subjunctive, and his Latin grammar was often reprinted and is still useful.

  • Sources:

    Charles Burton Gulick, DAB 7:588-89; G. L. Kittredge, “James Bradstreet Greenough,” HSCP 14 (1903) 1-16 (with complete bibliography); Sandys 458-59.

  • Author: Meyer Reinhold