John Gordon Fitch is a classical scholar. He works chiefly on Roman poetry, especially

Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus ( , ; – ) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem ''De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into E ...

and the dramas of

Seneca Seneca may refer to: People and language * Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname * Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America ** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people Places Extrat ...

, and his interests also include Greek and Roman texts on agriculture and medicine. He is a professor Emeritus at the

University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary instit ...

Education

He was educated at East Ham Grammar School, London, and

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...

. He received his undergraduate degree from

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

(1965) and his Ph.D. from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

(1974).

Career

Fitch was assistant professor at

Ball State University Ball State University (Ball State, State or BSU) is a public university, public research university in Muncie, Indiana. It has two satellite facilities in Fishers, Indiana, Fishers and Indianapolis. On July 25, 1917, the Ball brothers, indust ...

(1972–73), and was then appointed at the

, where he progressed to Associate Professor and then Professor and Chair in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies. He became Professor Emeritus on retirement from the University in 1999. In 1981 he proposed a new relative dating of Seneca's dramas, based on the structure of the iambic trimeter. This was followed by a detailed edition with commentary of Seneca's ''Hercules'', and simultaneously by a study of the anapaestic verses in the dramas (both 1987). Later came an edition of all the dramas in the bilingual

Loeb Classical Library The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; , ) is a series of books originally published by Heinemann in London, but is currently published by Harvard University Press. The library contains important works of ancient Greek and L ...

, accompanied by a separate textual commentary (both 2004). He has also written on the construction of selfhood and on the meaningful use of proper names in the dramas. Fitch is also interested in the poetry of knowledge, particularly that of

and

Vergil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

. In 2018 he published ''The Poetry of Knowledge and the ‘Two Cultures’'', which examines the interrelationship of knowledge and poetry across a wide range of literature from antiquity to the twenty-first century, and argues for their compatibility. He has also published an illustrated translation of Palladius' ''Opus Agriculturae''. In 2022 he published the first English translation of ''On Simples'', a Greek medicinal text of the first century A.D., traditionally (though wrongly) attributed to

Dioscorides Pedanius Dioscorides ( grc-gre, Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης, ; 40–90 AD), “the father of pharmacognosy”, was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of ''De materia medica'' (, On Medical Material) —a 5-vol ...

. Separately he published discussions of textual issues in each of these works.

Selected works

* ''Seneca's Hercules Furens: A Critical Text with Introduction and Commentary'', Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1987, * ''Seneca's Anapaests. Metre, Colometry, Text and Artistry in the Anapaests of Seneca's Tragedies'', Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987, * ''Seneca, Tragedies'' (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Vol. 1, 2002; vol. 2, 2004. Both volumes revised 2018. * ''Annaeana Tragica: Notes on the Text of Seneca's Tragedies'', Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2004, * ''Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Seneca'' (editor), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, * ''Palladius: The Work of Farming'' (translator), Totnes: Prospect Books, 2013, * ''The Poetry of Knowledge and the ‘Two Cultures’'', Palgrave Macmillan 2018, * ''On Simples, Attributed to Dioscorides: Introduction, Translation, Concordances'', Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2022,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fitch, John Academic staff of the University of Victoria British classical scholars Year of birth missing (living people) Living people