P. E. Easterling

Patricia Elizabeth Easterling (née Fairfax; 11 March 1934 – 18 August 2026) was an English classical scholar, recognised as a particular expert on the work of Sophocles. She was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 2001. She was the 36th person and the first — and, so far, only — woman to hold the post.

Life and career Born in Blackburn, Lancashire, Easterling attended Witton Park High School (originally called Blackburn High School for Girls) before graduating with first class honours and distinction in Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1955. After an initial spell lecturing at the University of Manchester (1957–1958), Easterling taught within the Cambridge Classics Faculty as a Fellow of Newnham College until 1987 when she took up the position of Professor of Greek at University College London. In 1987, she also became an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College. She gave the inaugural Housman Lecture at University College London on 14 June 2005.

Easterling was the first woman to chair the Council of University Classical Departments. In 1994, she returned to Cambridge and Newnham as the 36th Regius Professor of Greek, the first (and so far only) woman to hold that post since its endowment by Henry VIII.

In 1998, Easterling was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and in 2013 was made associé étranger de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres at the Institut de France, and Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She was the first Chair of the Management Committee of the Cambridge Greek Lexicon Project, and was a patron of the charity 'Classics for All'.

On 22 January 2000, Easterling received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Languages at Uppsala University, Sweden. She also received honorary doctorates from the universities of Athens, Bristol (1999), Royal Holloway (University of London) and Ioannina, and was an Honorary Fellow of University College London from 1997 onwards.

Easterling died on 18 August 2026, aged 92.

Academic interests Easterling specialised in Greek literature, particularly tragedy. She also studied the survival and reception of ancient drama. She had a long association with the Joint Association of Classical Teachers and with its Greek Summer School at Bryanston School in Dorset, giving lectures there on an occasional basis.

She was a General Editor of the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series from its foundation, and published an edition within this series of Sophocles' Trachiniae in 1982.

Publications Books Sophocles: Trachiniae, edited, Cambridge, 1982 Greek Religion and Society, edited with J. V. Muir, 1984 The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, General editor with E. J. Kenney The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, Editor, 1997 Greek Scripts: An Illustrated Introduction, edited with Carol Handley (Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, 2001) Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession, edited with Edith Hall, 2002 Sophocles: Electra and Other Plays (Penguin, 2008) ‘Studies in Greek Literature Volume 1: Greek Tragedy’ (CUP 2026) ‘Studies in Greek Literature Volume 2: Early Greek Literature, Reception, Ancient and Modern Scholarship’ (CUP 2026)

Articles 'Constructing the Heroic' in Christopher Pelling, Greek Tragedy and the Historian, Oxford, 1997: 21–37 'The Infanticide in Euripides' Medea', Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977): 177–191 "From Repertoire to Canon." in Easterling, P. E. (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, 1997, pp. 211–227. "Narrative on the Greek Tragic Stage." Defining Greek Narrative, 2014, pp. 226–240.