Colin François Lloyd Austin, FBA (26 July 1941 – 13 August 2010) was a
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English ...
scholar of ancient Greek.
Biography
Colin Austin was born in
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a me ...
, Australia, in 1941, the second son of Lloyd James Austin (1915–1994) and of Jeanne-Françoise (''née'' Guérin). A few years later the family moved to
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...
and then to
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
.
He was educated at the
Lycée Lakanal
Lycée Lakanal is a public secondary school in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, France, in the Paris metropolitan area. It was named after Joseph Lakanal, a French politician, and an original member of the Institut de France. The school also offers a mid ...
, Paris,
Manchester Grammar School
The Manchester Grammar School (MGS) in Manchester, England, is the largest independent day school for boys in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1515 as a free grammar school next to Manchester Parish Church, it moved in 1931 to its present site at ...
,
Jesus College, Cambridge
Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes f ...
Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Sir Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones FBA (21 September 1922 – 5 October 2009Browne Medal in 1961 and the
Porson Prize
The Porson Prize is an award for Greek verse composition at the University of Cambridge. It was founded in honor of classical scholar Richard Porson and was first awarded in 1817. Winners are known as "Porson prizemen".
Winners of the Porson Priz ...
in 1962.''The International Who's Who 2004''. London and New York: Europa Publications, 2003, p. 60. In 1965, the year in which he gained his doctorate, Austin returned to Cambridge as Research Fellow of Trinity Hall, where he then served as Director of Studies in Classics until 2005, and as University Lecturer (from 1969), Reader (from 1988) and finally as the holder of a personal chair as Professor of Greek (1998–2008) in the Faculty of Classics. In 1983 he was elected a Fellow of the
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.
It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...
.
He died on 13 August 2010.
Colin Austin's main works were related to Thesmophoriazusae by
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his fo ...
and
Menander
Menander (; grc-gre, Μένανδρος ''Menandros''; c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times. His re ...
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
in a 2004 edition co-edited by S. Douglas Olson. Austin was the first publisher (1967) of the new portion of
Euripides
Euripides (; grc, Εὐριπίδης, Eurīpídēs, ; ) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars ...
' tragedy Erectheus, extracted from a mummy casing in Paris. He was also the first publisher (1969) of the first and third plays from the Bodmer Codex of Menander: Samia "The Woman from Samos", and "Aspis", "The Shield". In partnership with Rudolf Kassel, Austin started in 1983 the comprehensive edition of the Greek Comic Dramatists, ''Poetae Comici Graeci'' (PCG). Volumes published up to 2001 provide some 4,500 pages of surviving texts of more than 250 authors with commentary.