John Pentland Mahaffy

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Rev. Sir John Pentland Mahaffy GBE CVO (26 February 1839-30 April 1919) was an Irish classical scholar. He was born in Switzerland on 12 July 1839. He received his early education in Switzerland and Germany, and later at Trinity College, Dublin. As a student, he became President of the University Philosophical Society. As an academic, he held Trinity's professorship of ancient history and was later Provost. He was a distinguished classicist and Egyptologist as well as a Doctor of Music. He wrote the music for the Frace in chapel. Mahaffy, a man of great versatility, published numerous works, some of which, especially those dealing with the 'Silver Age' of Greece, became standard authorities. His versatility was not confined to academia. He both shot and played cricket for Ireland and knew the pedigree of every racehorse in Ulster. He was also an expert fly fisherman.

He was regarded as one of Dublin's great curmudgeons. When aspiring to be Provost of Trinity College, upon hearing that the incumbent was ill, he is said to have remarked "Nothing trivial, I hope?" In his academic years, he was acquainted with undergraduate Oscar Wilde, with whom he discussed homosexuality in ancient Greece. Wilde described him as his "first and greatest teacher". Like his protégés, Wilde and Oliver Gogarty, Mahaffy was a brilliant conversationalist, coming out with such gems as “in Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs.” When asked, by an over-zealous advocate of women’s rights, what the difference was between a man and a woman he replied, “I can’t conceive.” He is also reputed to have said “James Joyce is a living argument in favour of my contention that it was a mistake to establish a separate university for the aborigines of this island – for the corner boys who spit into the Liffey.”

Among his most notable works are History of Classical Greek Literature (4th ed., 1903 seq.); Social Life in Greece from Homer to Menander (4th ed., 1903); The Silver Age of the Greek World (1906); The Empire of the Ptolemies (1896); Greek Life and Thought from Alexander to the Roman Conquest (2nd ed., 1896); The Greek World under Roman Sway from Polybius to Plutarch (1890). His translation of Kuno Fischer's Commentary on Kant (1866) and his own exhaustive analysis, with elucidations, of Kant's critical philosophy are also highly regarded. He also edited the Petrie papyri in the Cunningham Memoirs (vols. 1891—1905).

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• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.