School of History, Classics & Archaeology

Obituary - Gordon Howie

It is with great sadness that the School of History, Classics and Archaeology announces the death, on 29 December 2017, of our former colleague, Gordon Howie. (Published 11 January 2018)

Staff at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology were very sad to hear of the death of Gordon Howie. Gordon joined the former Department of Greek as a Lecturer in 1966 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1993. Following his retirement in 1997, he maintained a close association with the University as an Honorary Fellow.  Gordon was a gifted teacher of Greek language and literature, remembered especially for his support of modern Greek teaching in the University, but also for introducing the beginners’ course in ancient Greek, as well as for his passionate and learned Honours classes on Greek literary topics, especially lyric poetry. A keen student of German and cognate languages, he produced widely used and much-praised translations (in effect second editions) of Detlev Fehling’s "Herodotus and his ’sources’" (1989) and Eveline Krummen’s "Cult, myth, and occasion in Pindar's Victory Odes" (2014). His own essays on Greek literature, many of them classic works of scholarship, were published together as "Exemplum and myth, criticism and creation" in 2012. 

He will be much missed. Everyone joins in sending their deepest sympathies to his widow, May.

- Professor Douglas Cairns, Professor of Classics