All Scholars

HERINGTON, Cecil John

  • Cecil John Herington
  • Date of Birth: November 23, 1924
  • Born City: Isleworth
  • Born State/Country: England
  • Parents: Cecil Edward Eede, a physician, and Celia Mary Hewes H.
  • Date of Death: March 29, 1997
  • Death City: Chapel Hill
  • Death State/Country: NC
  • Married: Helen Janet Rose, 12 June 1948; Sara Mack, 25 May 1985.
  • Education:

    B.A. Exeter Coll., Oxford (Classical Archaeology), 1949; M.A. 1960; M.A. Yale, 1972; DHL., Adelphi U., 1994. 
  • Professional Experience:

    Asst. lectr., U. of Manchester, 1949-52; lectr., classics, 1952-5; Exeter U., 1956-60; vis. lectr., Smith Coll., 1960-2; asso. prof. classics, U. of Toronto, 1962-5; prof, classics & chair of dept. of classics, U. of Texas, 1965-70; prof. classics, Stanford, 1970-2; prof. classics & Talcott Prof. Greek, Yale, 1972-86, 1988-92; chair, classics dept., 1977-83; prof. Coll. Arts & Sci. & chair, class. stud., Duke, 1986-8; Paddison Prof. Classics, U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1995-6; memb., U. of Manchester Archaeological Expedition to Cyrene, 1955; Cromer Prize for Greek, British Academy, 1958; ACLS grant, 1967; Guggenheim fell., 1968-9; asso. dir., National Humanities Inst., Yale, 1976; Sather Prof., 1978; Martin Class. Lectr., Oberlin, 1991. 
  • Publications:

    “Works and Days,” G&R 13 (1944) 86-8; Athena Parthenos and Athena Polias. A Study in the Religion of Periclean Athens, with appendix: “On Athenagoras, Πρέσβεια περι χριστιανῶν ch. 17,” (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Pr., 1955). REVS: G&R 2nd Ser. III 1956 169 | Gnomon XXVIII 1956 304-305 Nilsson | REA LVIII 1956 114-116 Marcadé ; JHS LXXVII 1957 166 Gomme | AJA LXI 1957 208-209 Harrison | CR N.S. VII 1957 84 Guthrie | MH XIV 1957 246 Jucker | Mnemosyne X 1957 64-66 Bijvanck | Gymnasium LXIX 1957 283-284 Scheidweiler ; PP XIII 1958 347-350 Levi | REG LXX 1957 510-513 Chamoux | AAHG XIII 1960 155 Schachermeyr; “A Thirteenth-Century Manuscript of the Octavia praetexta in Exeter,” RhM 101 (1958) 353-77; “The Temple of Zeus at Cyrene. Studies and Discoveries in 1954-1957, II: The Cult-Statue,” PBSR 26 (1958) 41-61; “The Exeter Manuscript of the Octavia. A Correction,” RhM 103 (1960) 96; “Octavia praetexta, A Survey,” CQ 11 (1961) 18-30; “Aeschylus, Prometheus Unbound, fr. 193 (Titanum suboles...),” TAPA 92 (1961) 239-50; “Titanum suboles, A Fragment of Aeschylus, Prometheus Unbound, Preserved in a Latin Translation by Cicero (fr. 193),” (trans.) Arion 1,2 (1962) 94;  “A Unique Technical Feature of the Prometheus Bound,” CR 13 (1963) 5-7; “A Study in the Prometheia: I & II: The Elements of the Trilogy; Birds and Prometheia,” Phoenix 17 (1963) 180-97 & 236-43; “Athena in Athenian Literature and Cult,” G&R 10 (1963) Suppl., 61-73; “The Influence of Old Comedy on Aeschylus' Later Trilogies,” TAPA 94 (1963) 113-23; “Some Evidence for a Late Dating of the Prometheus Vinctus,” CR 14 (1964) 239-40; “Aeschylus. The Last Phase,” Arion 4 (1965) 387-403; “Senecan Tragedy,” Arion 5 (1966) 422-71; “De versu, ut videtur, tragico apud Philostratum latente,  RhM 109 (1966) 186; “Aeschylus in Sicily,” JHS 87 (1967) 74-85; “A Classical Library in Sound,” Arion 6 (1967) 528-9; “Homer: A Byzantine Perspective,” Arion 8 (1969) 432-4; The Author of the Prometheus Bound (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 1970). REVS: CW LXIV 1971 198 Musurillo | CPh LXVIII 1973 305-306 Tracy | ACR I 1971 169-170 McKay | Phoenix XXVIII 1974 258-264 Stinton | AJPh XCIV 1973 305-307 Podlecki | CJ LXIX 1974 258-260 Peradotto; “Death and the Mysteries. Plutarch, De anima, Fragment 6,” (trans.) Arion 7 (1968) 392; “Translations,” with W. Barnstone, R.E. Braun, B. Bunting, A. Hamori, J. Hynd et al., Arion 9 (1970) 279-309; The Older Scholia on the Prometheus Bound (ed.) Mnemosyne Suppl. 19 (Leiden: Brill, 1972). REVS: JHS XCIII 1973 224 Whittle | CR XXIV 1974 287-288 Wilson | ACR III 1973 87-88 Levin | Mnemosyne XXVIII 1975 430-432 Holwerda; “Silent Heralds (Aeschylus, Fr. 212 a² Mette),” RhM 115 (1972) 199-203; Prometheus Bound (trans. with J. Scully), foreword by W. Arrowsmith, The Greek Tragedy in New Trans. (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1975). REVS: G&R XXIV 1977 82 Ireland | CW LXXI 1977 195-196 Tarrant | CW LXXI 1978 410-412 Tarrant; Persians (trans. with J. Lembecke) Greek Tragedy in New Trans. (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1981); “Pindar's Eleventh Pythian Ode and Aeschylus' Agamemnon,” in Greek Poetry and Philosophy. Studies in Honour of Leonard Woodbury, ed. D.E. Gerber (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1984) 137-46; Poetry into Drama. Early Tragedy and the Greek Poetic Tradition, Sather Class. Lectures 49 (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1985). REVS: TLS LXXXV 1986 18 Gould | LCM XII 1987 89-93 Halliwell | CPh LXXXII 1987 154-156 Burnett | CR XXXVII 1987 41-43 Rutherford | EMC XXXI 1987 115-117 Podlecki | AC LVI 1987 307-309 van Looy | QUCC 1993 N° 43 133-138 G. Cerri; Aeschylus, Hermes Books (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1986). REVS: G&R XXXIII 1986 204 Parker | TLS LXXXV 1986 943 Leach | CJ LXXXIII 1987 59-64 Dawe | CPh LXXXII 1987 154-156 Burnett | CB LXIII 1987 57-58 Culham | CR XXXVII 1987 298-299 Lloyd | JHS CVII 1987 198-199 Garvie | Platon XXXIX 1987 183-184 Rexine | Lexis 1989 127-128 Citti | EClás XXVIII 1986 Nᵒ 90 291-294 Adrados | RPL 14 1991 261-263 M. Shaw; “The Poem of Herodotus,” Arion 1, 3 (1991) 5-16; “The Closure of Herodotus' Histories,” ICS 16 (1991) 149-60; Robert Lamberton, Plutarch (foreword) Hermes Books (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 2001). REVS: AFB 2000 22 N° 10 : 98-100 Jaume Pòrtulas | CO 2002-2003 80 (2): 91-92 Stephen Thomas Newmyer | CR 2003 N. S. 53 (1): 73-74 Sven-Tage Teodorsson | JRS 2003 93: 392-394 Alexei V. Zadorojnyi | Ploutarchos 2001-2002 18 (2): 22-23 Frances Bonner Titchener | CB 2002 78 (2): 234-239 Albert Keith Whitaker | CJ 2004-2005 100 (4): 427-430 Christoph F. Konrad | CW 2003-2004 97 (1): 107-108 Rebecca R. J. Benefiel; James S. Romm, Herodotus Hermes Books (foreword) (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1998). REVS: CR 1999 N. S. 49 (2) : 364-366 Thomas Harrison | AJPh 2000 121 (2): 309-313 Stewart Flory | CJ 1999-2000 95 (3): 268-273 John Marincola | HZ 2000 271 (1): 146-147 Klaus Rosen | LEC 2000 68 (2-3): 252-253 A. Delcourt
  • Notes:

    John Herington left his native country in 1960 and spent the rest of his life in America. He taught first at Smith College, then the University of Toronto. In due course he was lured down to Austin where the classics department had opened up and become the place where those with a taste for literature and that sort of thing gathered to drink coffee and talk, perhaps attending a class and even picking up a bit of Greek or Latin. In 1962 Arion was conceived, whose founding spirit was Bill Arrowsmith. Herington joined the journal three years later and quickly became a central presence, more guarded and far more learned than any of us. Trained in the rigorous Oxford way, he was a professional and could not but be aware that his colleagues were by his standards amateurs. He knew however that more than professional scholarship is needed to bring the classics back to life and he believed in Arion’s mission, contributing a good deal that was very well worth having, most notably the fifty-page article “Senecan Tragedy” (Winter 1966). This paper, the strongest Herington ever wrote, shows the piety of humanism at its finest, the effort to recover an unjustly forgotten master.

          When Austin’s classical Aufklärung came to an abrupt end, Herington packed his bags and made for the erudite world of New Haven where he soft-pedalled his passions and wrote nothing more of this kind. 

    He loved language, as a classical person should, Greek perhaps even more than Latin, and liked to quote Gibbon’s description of our sovereign speech: “A musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.” 

          For all his reading, however, he was not an umbratile man with his nose always in the pages of a book. Something of an athlete, he was happy out of doors, happiest in a boat which he handled skillfully. He was also a maker, clever with his hands. In the garden of his rather mean house in Austin he built a miniature/ruined classical temple with a beautifully cut Latin inscription. 

          He should have written the essential book on Aeschylus, that great master whom he loved so deeply and understood so finely. The short book he did write on Aeschylus, for the Yale Hermes series which he edited, is of course well-informed and competent, but it lacks the intensity of commitment that drives his article on Seneca.

          And there is another work that we should have had from him, one that revealed what it was in Greek poetry that held him to it for a lifetime. It would have been a book that only a scholar could have written, and only a scholar with the eyes, the visionary reach, capable of looking far into the abysm of time from which we emerged. 

    Excerpted with permission from D.S. Carne-Ross, “John Herington 1924-1997,” Arion 3rd ser. 5, 1 (1997) 1-6.
  • Sources:

    WhAm 51 (1997) 1897; WhWasWh 12 (1996-8) 107.
  • Author: D.S. Carne-Ross