George Burges
Encyclopedia
George Burges was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 classical scholar born in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

Biography

George Burges was educated at Charterhouse School
Charterhouse School
Charterhouse School, originally The Hospital of King James and Thomas Sutton in Charterhouse, or more simply Charterhouse or House, is an English collegiate independent boarding school situated at Godalming in Surrey.Founded by Thomas Sutton in London in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian...

 and Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, taking his degree in 1807, and obtaining one of the members' prizes both in 1808 and 1809. He stayed up at Cambridge and became a most successful coach. He had a great reputation as a Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 scholar, and was a somewhat acrimonious critic of rival scholars, especially Bishop Blomfield
Charles James Blomfield
Charles James Blomfield was a British divine, and a Church of England bishop for 32 years.-Early life:Blomfield was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk and educated at the local grammar school and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won the Browne medals for Latin and Greek odes, and the Craven...

.

Subsequently he fell into embarrassed circumstances through injudicious speculation, and in 1841 a civil list pension of £100 per annum was bestowed upon him. He died at Ramsgate
Ramsgate
Ramsgate is a seaside town in the district of Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century and is a member of the ancient confederation of Cinque Ports. It has a population of around 40,000. Ramsgate's main attraction is its coastline and its main...

, on the 11th of January 1864. Burges was a man of great learning and industry, but too fond of introducing arbitrary emendations into the text of classical authors.

Works

His chief works are:
  • Euripides
    Euripides
    Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

    ' Troades (1807) and Phoenissae (1809)
  • Aeschylus
    Aeschylus
    Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...

    ' Supplices (1821), Eumenides (1822) and Prometheus (1831)
  • Sophocles
    Sophocles
    Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...

    ' Philoctetes (5833)
  • EF Poppo
    Ernst Friedrich Poppo
    Ernst Friedrich Poppo , German classical scholar and schoolmaster, was born at Guben in Brandenburg.In 1818 he was appointed director of the gymnasium at Frankfurt , where he died on 6 November 1866, having resigned his post three years before.Poppo was an extremely successful teacher and...

    's Prolegomena to Thucydides
    Thucydides
    Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...

    (1837), an abridged translation with critical remarks
  • Hermesianactis Fragmenta (1839)

He also edited some of the dialogues of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

 with English notes including Meno
Meno
Meno is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato. It attempts to determine the definition of virtue, or arete, meaning virtue in general, rather than particular virtues, such as justice or temperance. The first part of the work is written in the Socratic dialectical style and Meno is reduced to...

, Parmenides
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides...

, Statesman
Statesman
A statesman is usually a politician or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career in politics or government at the national and international level. As a term of respect, it is usually left to supporters or commentators to use the term...

, and The Laws, and translated nearly the whole of that author and the Greek anthology for Bohn's Classical library.

He was a frequent contributor to the Classical Journal and other periodicals, and dedicated to Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...

a play called The Son of Erin, or, The Cause of the Greeks (1823).
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