North American Scholar

PARSONS, Richard

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  • Date of Birth: 1847-06-25
  • Born City: Moate
  • Born State/Country: Ireland
  • Parents: Richard & Margaret Payne P.
  • Date of Death: 1926-02-11
  • Death City: Delaware
  • Death State/Country: OH
  • Married: Eusebia Larason, 1871.
  • Education:

    A.B. Ohio Wesleyan, 1868; A.M., 1871; Litt.D., 1921.
  • Professional Experience:

    Tutor to prof. Gk. Ohio Wesleyan, 1875-1920; spec. stud. ASCSA, 1893-4.
  • Publications:

    Cebes' Tablet (Boston, 1887; repr. & rev. 1889, 1892, 1895, 1897 [bis], 1901, 1904).
  • Notes:

    Richard Parsons combined a 40-year teaching career at his alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan, with an active interest in scholarship. He was witty in class and a productive scholar, publishing an important school edition of the so-called Tablet of Cebes and a translation of Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris. He also worked on Epictetus. The unique Tablet, a philosophical work admired by Milton but rarely read by modern students of Greek or their teachers, was not reedited in English until 1983. His work proved its usefulness at the turn of the century by going through two editions and eight printings by 1904.
  • Sources:

    Delaware Gazette (11 Feb. 1926) 1; H. C. Hubbart, Ohio Wesleyan. The First Hundred Years (Hammond, IN, 1943) 196-7; B. L. McElroy, Ohio Wesleyan Magazine 3.6 (Mar. 1926) 131 (with portrait); Parsons, History of Delaware County and Ohio (Chicago, 1880), 640.
  • Author: Donald Lateiner