Richmond Lattimore, Translation, and the Democratization of the American University
Richmond Lattimore ‘26 (1906-1984) embodies the best of the Dartmouth liberal arts education. A scholar and a poet, Lattimore used his rigorous training in Greek and his acute poetic sensibility to translate ancient Greek authors. After earning his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1934, Lattimore was a professor at Bryn Mawr from 1935-1971. Lattimore was arguably the finest Anglo-American translator of ancient Greek in the mid-20th century.
As part of their educations at Dartmouth College and elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of undergraduates have read Lattimore’s celebrated translations of Homer’s Iliad (1951) and Odyssey (1967), the latter dedicated to his Dartmouth Greek professor, Royal Nemiah. His precise, clear, and elegant translations encouraged audiences to access the ancient text in new and exciting ways. As American higher education expanded rapidly after the Second World War, generations of students explored powerful expressions of life’s challenges through Lattimore’s translations. They still do so today: as recently as Winter Term 2019, students at Dartmouth and other institutions were reading Lattimore’s translations.
Dartmouth honored Lattimore in 1958 with an honorary Doctor of Letters degree. President Dickey remarked at Commencement: “A society with less and less knowledge of the Greek language must look increasingly to you as a trustee for the conveyance to it of its own past.”
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Hanover Poems
“Lovers of the foothills of the White Mountains, and especially the little town which is the seat of Dartmouth College, ‘where pine trees lift a thousand spears / to greet a hundred thousand stars’ will welcome the appearance of Hanover Poems."
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President John Sloan Dickey awards honorary degrees to Dartmouth alumni, 1958. From left: Egyptologist Ray Winfield Smith ‘18, President John Sloan Dickey, Richmond Lattimore, and historian Carl Bridenbaugh ‘25.
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Three poet-alumni come back to Dartmouth: Richard Eberhart ‘26, Richmond Lattimore, and Marshall Schacht ‘27 in 1950.