Re: Basil Gildersleeve

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 18 1999 - 21:04:00 EST


<x-rich>At 7:37 PM -0600 1/18/99, Jeffrey B. Gibson wrote:

>Paul S. Dixon wrote:

>>

>> Dear b-Greekers:

>>

>> Is Capt. Basil Gildersleeve the same Gildersleeve

>> of world-famous reknown? I came across this recently

>> while reading, "A Soldier's Recollections - Leaves from

>> the Diary of a young Confederate" (Randolph McKim, D.D.):

>>

>> "On September 27th [1864] ... I find a record of another fight,

>> and among the wounded was Capt. Basil L. Gildersleeve,

>> serving on the staff of General Gordon. This accomplished

>> and great scholar, the greatest "Grecian" of his day in

>> America, had been my professor of Greek at the University

>> of Virginia in 1859-60. On the closing of the University he had

>> entered the service, and had shown that he could emulate the

>> courage of the heroes of Hellas as successfully as he could

>> expound the intricacies of their beautiful language. He carries

>> to this day, in his limping gait, the witness of his gallantry in

>> that fight forty-five years ago, but, though long past seventy

>> years of age, his intellect marches as erect and vigorous as

>> ever. His career may remind us that the cause of the South

>> rallied to its support men of every rank and condition in life,

>> the student and the scholar, not less than the man of affairs"

>> (p. 233).

>>

>Paul,

>

>If by the Gildersleeve of renown" you mean the Great Gildersleeve of

>radio and TV the answer is no. His name was Throckmorton P.

>Gildersleeve, immortalized by Harold Perry.

Edward will have to help us out on this one; I'm not sure but what Paul
Dixon isn't, in fact, reading about the truly great Basil Gildersleeve.
He must have been a pretty young man during the Civil War if he's the
same man who took his advanced work in Classics in Germany and then for
years taught at Johns Hopkins and was editor for years of the
granddaddy of American Classical journals, American Journal of
Philology. His editions with commentary on the Olympian and Pythian
Odes of Pindar are still the standard work for those few students who
get as far in Greek as reading Pindar (hardest poetry--along with
Aeschylus--that there is in Greek), and I think he was also the
original author of one of the standard Latin grammars, still in print
(recently re-printed in yet another edition) as "Gildersleeve and
Lodge." Can one man have spanned that term? I don't know; a pastor of
renown at my church (Second Presbyterian in St. Louis) who came to us
in 1864 from Princeton Seminary was Dr. John Nicholls, and he served
until about 1916 in a very remarkable career that must have paralleled
Gildersleeve's in some respects, certainly in longevity and length of
career. Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, at any rate, was a giant in
American Classical scholarship.

Here's a citation from a draft work on Thucydides by Greg Crane (of
Perseus):

'Warfare, especially its unpredictable course and unexpected
consequences, has often attracted classicists to Thucydides. Basil
Lanneau Gildersleeve, the first great American classicist, had as a
young professor at the University of Virginia spent his summer
vacations campaigning with Robert E. Lee's army, and he took from this
experience a wound that troubled him the rest of his life. When, more
than thirty years later, he wrote about his experiences, he playfully
titled the piece "A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War."'

Carl W. Conrad

Department of Classics/Washington University

One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018

Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649

cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us

WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

</x-rich>



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