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David Binning Monro ( November 16, 1836 - August 22, 1905) was an Scottish Homeric scholar.He was born in Edinburgh, the grandson of Alexander Monro, tertius (1773-1859), professor of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, whose own father, Alexander Monro, secundus (1733-1817), and grandfather, Alexander Monro, primus (1697-1767), had both filled the same position. David Monro was educated at the University of Glasgow, Brasenose College, Oxford and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1859 he was elected fellow, and in 1882 provost of Oriel, which office he held till his death at Heiden, Switzerland.
He was a polymath, an excellent linguist, and possessed considerable knowledge of music, painting and architecture. His favourite study was Homer, and his Grammar of the Homeric Dialect (2nd ed., 1891) established his reputation as an authority on the subject. He edited the last twelve books of the OdysseyFor the cable TV channel formerly called Odyssey, see the Hallmark Channel. The Odyssey is the second of the two great Greek epic poems ascribed to Homer, the first being the Iliad''. The book follows the events of the voyage of Odysseus, king of Ithaca,, with valuable appendices on the composition of the poem, its relation to the IliadThe Iliad is, alongside The Odyssey one of the two major Greek epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer, a blind Ionian poet. The Iliad and the Odyssey were considered by Greeks of the classical age and after as the most important works in Ancient Gre and the cyclic poets, the history of the text, the dialects, and the Homeric house; a critical text of the poems and fragments (Homeri opera et reliquiae, 1896); Homeri opera (1902, with TW Allen, in Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca oxoniensis); and an edition of the Iliad with notes for schools.
His article on Homer, written for the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, was revised by him for later versions before he died. Mention may also be made of his Modes of Ancient Greek Music (1894), on which see Classical Review for December 1894, with author's reply in the same for February 1895.
See Memoir by J Cook Wilson (Oxford, 1907).
References
Monro, David Binning
Monro, David Binning
