Classicist, born in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. A child prodigy who read widely in Latin by the age of six, he received his BA from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) at age 17 and his PhD from the University of Gottingen at 22. Thought of as the greatest American classicist of his day, his Latin Grammar (1867), Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes (1885), and Greek Syntax (1900), were used by generations of American students. He founded the American Journal of Philology (1880), was twice president of the American Philological Association (1878, 1909), and greatly shaped the Johns Hopkins graduate school, where he taught in 18561915.
Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (October 23, 1831 – January 9, 1924), American classical scholar, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, son of Benjamin Gildersleeve (1791-1875), a Presbyterian evangelist, and editor of the Charleston Christian Observer from 1826 to 1845, of the Richmond (Va.) Watchman and Observer from 1845 to 1856, and of The Central Presbyterian from 1856 to 1860.
B.L. Gildersleeve graduated from Princeton in 1849 at the age of eighteen, and went on to study under Johannes Franz in Berlin, under Friedrich Ritschl at Bonn and under Schneidewin at Göttingen, where he received his doctor's degree in 1853.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, many faculty members at Southern universities resigned their positions to join the Confederate armies. Gildersleeve accepted a staff position in the summer of 1861, and he returned to the army each spring at the conclusion of classes. During a skirmish in the Shenandoah Valley in September 1864, Gildersleeve was delivering orders to the front when gunfire shattered his leg. Gildersleeve's own comment on this incident summed it up: "I lost my pocket Homer, I lost my pistol, I lost one of my horses and, finally, I came very near losing my life."
On December 11, 1875, Daniel Coit Gilman, president of the newly-founded Johns Hopkins University, approached Gildersleeve with the offer of teaching Classics there, and he gladly accepted. He would later write: "The greater freedom of action, the larger appliances, the wider and richer life, the opportunities for travel and for personal intercourse have stimulated production and have made my last 14 years my most fruitful years in the eyes of the scholarly world."
In 1880, the American Journal of Philology, a quarterly published by the Johns Hopkins University, was established under his editorial charge, and his strong personality was expressed in the department of the Journal headed "Brief Report" or "Lanx Satura," and in the earliest years of its publication every tiny detail was in his hands.
But his bent was rather toward Greek than Latin. Gildersleeve's studies under Franz had no doubt quickened his interest in Greek syntax, and his logic, untrammelled by previous categories, and his marvellous sympathy with the language were displayed in this most unlikely of places. Gildersleeve edited in 1885 The Olympian and Pythian Odes of Pindar, with a brilliant and valuable introduction.
He was elected president of the American Philological Association in 1877 and again in 1908 and became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as of various learned societies.
Gildersleeve retired from teaching in 1915, after a professorial career spanning nearly sixty years, and died quietly in 1924. Gildersleeve House, one of the undergraduate dormitories at Johns Hopkins, is named in his honor.
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