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Robinson Ellis

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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ROBINSON ELLIS (1834--), English classical scholar, was born at Barming, near Maidstone, on the 5th of September 1834. He was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, Rugby, and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1858 he became fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and in 1870 professor of Latin at University College, London. In 1876 he returned to Oxford, where from 1883 to 1893 he held the university readership in Latin. In -189.3 he succeeded Henry Nettleship as professor. His chief work has been on Catullus, whom he began to study in 1859. His first Commentary on Catullus (1876) aroused great interest, and called forth a flood of criticism. In 1889 appeared a second and enlarged edition, which placed its author in the first rank of authorities on Catullus. Professor Ellis quotes largely from the early Italian commentators, maintaining that the land where the Renaissance originated had done more for scholarship than is commonly recognized. He has supplemented his critical work by a translation (1871, dedicated to Tennyson) of the poems in the metres of the originals. Another author to whom Professor Ellis has devoted many years' study is Manilius, the astrological poet. In 1891 he published Nodes Manilianae, a series of dissertations on the Astronomica, with emendations. He has also treated Avianus, Velleius Paterculus and the Christian poet Orientius, whom he edited for the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum. He edited the Ibis of Ovid, the Aetna of the younger Lucilius, and contributed to the Anecdota Oxoniensia various unedited Bodleian and other manuscripts. In 1907 he published Appendix Vergiliana (an edition of the minor poems); in 1908 The Annalist Licinianus.