Despite knowing it was imminent, the death of our beloved Advisory Board chairman Christopher Rowe a month ago has knocked us for six, especially Phil and me. This is the obituary I wrote, which will be published in this year’s JHS, along with this picture, which combines his typical grin with his equally typical nouthetic finger:
The moral philosopher Christopher Rowe, a past President of both the Hellenic Society and the Classical Association, died on July 26 at the age of 81. He was also a founder member of the International Plato Society; he was awarded in OBE in 2009 for his outstanding contribution to scholarship.
His influential works include An introduction to Greek Ethics (1976) and Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing (2007), as well as translations and/or commentaries on Hesiod (1978), Plato’s Phaedo (1993), Statesman (1995), Symposium (1998), Theaeteus and Sophist (2015) and Lysis (2005), with Terry Penner, and on Nicomachean Ethics (2002), with Sarah Broadie.
He revelled in collaboration, resulting in The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (2000), with Malcolm Schofield and New Perspectives on Plato (2002), with Julia Abbas. In later life he returned to Aristotle, with whom he had begun his publishing career with a comparison of the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics in 1971; his crucial new Oxford edition of the Eudemian Ethics came out in 2023, followed by the first translation of the new text, stalwartly completed when he knew his death was imminent. His ashes will be scattered, in accordance with his wishes, in Aristotle’s birthplace, Stagira.
A born leader, he coaxed the Durham Department of Classics and Ancient History, after he arrived from Bristol in 1996, into working as a team towards intellectual ambition and a modern, inclusive approach to pedagogy. He supported younger colleagues both personally and professionally with a passionate commitment few of us had experienced before. His love of and responsibility towards his own family, especially Heather, a Girton classicist he had met when they were undergraduates at Cambridge, were legendary. He is survived by their children Daniel and Sarah and three grandchildren
Christopher was fun, funny, trenchant, honest and direct, He exuded moral authority. He addressed all problems as opportunities to be approached via Socratic elenchus and Aristotelian deliberation. He walked his Virtue Ethics talk. He was loved by the entire Classics community in the UK and by everyone he met and helped on his energetic foreign travels. He leaves a big hole in our hearts.
The formality and conciseness required by the obituary format did not allow me to express just how deeply I valued his friendship and everything he had done for me and my family, for Classics and Philosophy at Durham, and indeed in support of this very project.
Phil and I were able to communicate how much we loved him when we visited him and Heather at home in Hebden Bridge last autumn, shortly after he made his diagnosis public. We had a splendid lunch in a local pub and Christopher downed two pints of real ale with relish.
The whole department, plus close friends and colleagues he had specially requested, hosted a day in his honour on December 12th 2024. Christopher regaled us with a deeply personal and wildly funny account of his life, with some arguably actionable anecdotes about some of the many philosophers he had known. This wonderful performance was followed by a lovely lunch which Heather and their daughter Sarah also attended.
We are absolutely delighted, as Christopher would have been, that Ineke Sluiter has agreed to become the Advisory Board’s new Chair.
Edith Hall
