Roger David Dawe

Roger David Dawe (15 September 1934 – 16 February 2020) was a British classical scholar, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Biography Born in Bristol, educated at Clifton College and at Caius College, from where he graduated with Firsts in the Classical Tripos and was twice recipient of the Porson Prize. His Ph.D. tutor was Sir Denys Page, under whom he defended a thesis on the manuscript transmission of Aeschylus in 1961; Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones sat in the examining commission.

Dawe was made a Fellow of Caius College in 1957, moving to Trinity College in 1963 where he was Teaching Fellow (1963–1998) and Senior Research Fellow (1998–2001).

His wife, Kerstin Marianne Wallner (d. 2000), was Swedish. The Dawes resided in Bulstrode Gardens, Cambridge. He was fond of gardening, opera and tennis.

Research Activity Dawe researched the textual transmission of ancient Greek playwriters, with special interest for Aeschylus and Sophocles. His first monographs were a study of the manuscript transmission of Aeschylus' plays, which firmed the grounds for Denys Page's Oxford edition, and a repertoire of conjectures on Aeschylus.

He went on to investigate the transmission of Sophocles' plays, publishing a three-volume research companion on the text and transmission of Sophocles and the Teubner edition of all the seven plays. Dawe's Teubner Sophocles received a second, revised edition and each play also appeared in third-edition, separate volumes. The Oedipus the King was also edited for the "Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics" series. His Sophoclean scholarship was praised by Lloyd-Jones, who would later also edit Sophocles.

Outside Greek plays, Dawe published a translation with commentary of Homer's Odyssey and he edited the Teubner text of the Philogelos — a late-antique collection of jokes. Dawe, with James Diggle, was also responsible for revising and preparing for publication Page's posthumous edition and commentary of Greek epigrams; with Diggle and Pat Easterling, Dawe also edited a Festschrift to honor of Page's seventieth birthday.

Publications The complete list of publications was collected by P. J. Finglass after Dawe's death.

Trivia

At Bristol, Dawe resided in Beaconsfield Road, where also Cary Grant grew up.