North American Scholar

PHILLIPS, Oliver Clyde, Jr.

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  • Date of Birth: 1929-10-23
  • Born City: Kansas City
  • Born State/Country: MO
  • Parents: Oliver Clyde & Blanche Campbell P.
  • Date of Death: 2010-02-06
  • Death City: Lawrence
  • Death State/Country: KS
  • Married: Shirley Ann Liese, 6 June 1954
  • Education:

    Student, Kansas City Junior College, 1948; B.S. Education, University of Kansas, 1950; postgrad. Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, 1953; M.A. Classics, University of Missouri, 1954; Shorey fellow, University of Chicago, 1958-9; Ph.D., 1962.
  • Dissertation:

    "The Influence of Ovid in Lucan's Bellum Civile (Chicago, 1962).
  • Professional Experience:

    Teacher, Great Bend High School, Kansas, 1950; Southeast High School, Kansas City, MO, 1951; Northeast Junior High School, Kansas City, MO, 1954-55; asso. prof. to prof. Classics, William Jewell College, Liberty, MO, 1955-64; prof. classics, director, correspondence study, University of Kansas, 1964-94; visiting professor University of Cologne, 1983.
  • Publications:

    “Lucan Bellum civile III.682,” CP 59 (1964) 109-110; “Lucan's Grove,” CP 63 (1968) 296-300; "Aeole, namque tibi Vergilius 26 (1980) 18-25; “Profundum maris or profundi maris? Apuleius 4.31 Again,” in Studi per Riccardo Ribuoli: scritti di filologia, musicologia, storia, ed. Franco Piperno (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1986) 121-24; “Heracles' πάρεργα and πράξεις,” AncW 21 (1990) 93-96; “St. Augustine's Lucanesque Moment: The Third Book of The City of God, AugStud 22 (1991) 157-64; Cosmesi e seduzione in Ovidio e nel mondo romano. What Do You Do with a Verb with 44 Different Meanings?, with Annamaria Coletti Strangi, trans. G. Soraci, Collana di Aternus ; 3 (L'Aquila: Univ. degli Studi dell'Aquila Dip. di Culture Comparate, 1991); “Singing away Snakebite: Lucan's Magical Cures,” in Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, ed. Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki (Leiden & New York: Brill, 1995) 391-400; “From Man to Mongoose: Lucan's Psyllus and Isidore's Suillus,” MLatJb 33,2 (1998) 15-20.
  • Notes:

    Oliver Phillips was the mainstay of Kansas classics for three decades. He began as a a high-school teacher but a Shorey fellowship at the University of Chicago brought him to the university level. He maintained his ties to Chicago by regularly contributing reviews to Classical Philology during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was recognized at Kansas with a Mortar Board Award for teaching in 1978 and was given a CAMWS ovatio in 1993, the year before his retirement. He continued to teach honors sections of his western civilization course as an emeritus and was a contributor to the online Suda project.
  • Sources:

    WhAm 48 (1994) 2712
  • Author: Ward W. Briggs, Jr.