Roger Dawe and the Text of Greek Tragedy

Roger Dawe, who died in February this year at the age of 85, made a unique and lasting contribution to Hellenic studies. In a publishing career that lasted just over half a century, his work on Greek texts ranged from Homer (A21, B13) and Stesichorus (A10) to Constantine Manasses (A20) and Nicetas Eugenianus (A31).1 He also made several contributions to the history of classical scholarship, especially on scholars from his own Cambridge college, Trinity, where he was a Fellow for the best part of six decades (A17-19, M1; also A33-4, 41). But his main work was on tragedy. He produced fundamental studies of the manuscript traditions of Aeschylus (B1; cf. A1-2) and Sophocles (B3-4, B6). He did not actually edit Aeschylus, but prepared the way for the Oxford Classical Text of his teacher, Denys Page: partly through his book on the manuscript tradition, partly through his repertory of conjectures on the text made by previous scholars (B2; cf. A39). Page paid elegant tribute to his pupil’s work in the preface to his Oxford Classical Text, a book which could scarcely have been completed without him.2 Dawe did edit Sophocles – three times in