Agathe Thornton


Agathe Henriette Franziska Thornton was a New Zealand academic specialising in classics and Māori studies. She was born in Germany and moved to New Zealand in 1947. She taught in the classics department of the University of Otago from 1948, eventually being appointed professor of classics, until her retirement in 1975.

Early life

Thornton was born Agathe Schwarzschild on 20 November 1910. Her father was the physicist Karl Schwarzschild, her mother was Else Schwarzschild née Rosenbach; and she had two younger brothers, the German-American physicist Martin Schwarzschild, and Alfred Schwarzschild who remained in Nazi Germany and was murdered during the Holocaust. While living in Germany she studied at the University of Göttingen.
In 1933 she moved to the United Kingdom, fleeing Nazi Germany because of Jewish heritage on her father's side. There she studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, supported by the astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, and with financial aid from an anonymous donor who was later identified as Sir Arthur Eddington. At the outbreak of World War II she avoided internment on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien thanks to support from W. H. M. Greaves, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, who stood bail for her. In Scotland she met and married the Presbyterian minister Harry Thornton.

Academic career

Thornton published her first academic article in 1945 while living in Newmachar, Aberdeenshire. In 1947 her family moved to New Zealand, and from 1948 onwards both Agathe and her husband Harry taught as lecturers at the University of Otago in Dunedin. Her appointment was the occasion for overturning a university prohibition on hiring married women with children. In 1970 she published her best-known book, People and Themes in Homer's Odyssey.
After retirement in 1975, she continued publishing in the field of classics, while also learning the Māori language for the purpose of scholarship. In 1986 she presented the Macmillan Brown Lectures at the University of Otago on the theme 'Maori oral literature as seen by a classicist'. These lectures were published the following year in a book of the same title.
Her subsequent research publications were in the field of Māori studies. These included new editions of Māori oral literature, studies of Māori cosmological myths, and articles on linguistics and oral narrative techniques.

Works

  • 1945. The Hibbert journal 44: 132–134.
  • 1962. Time and style: a psycho-linguistic essay in classical literature. London: Methuen.
  • 1962. 'A Catullan quotation in Virgil's Æneid book VI." Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 17: 77-79.
  • 1963. 'Why do the suitors feast in the house of Odysseus?' Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 20: 341-345.
  • 1965. 'Horace's ode to Calliope.' Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 23: 96-102.
  • 1969. 'A Roman view of the universe in the first century BC.' Prudentia 1.1: 2-13.
  • 1970. People and themes in Homer's Odyssey. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.
  • 1976. The living universe: gods and men in Virgil's Aeneid. Mnemosyne supplement 46. Leiden: Brill.
  • 1978. 'Once again, the duals in book 9 of the Iliad." Glotta 56.1/2: 1–4.
  • 1984. Homer's Iliad: its composition and the motif of supplication. Hypomnemata 81. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht.
  • 1984. 'The story of the woman brought back from the underworld.' The journal of the Polynesian Society 93.3: 295–314.
  • 1985. 'Two features of oral style in Maori narrative.' The journal of the Polynesian Society 94.2: 149–176.
  • 1986. Te Uamairangi's lament for his house. Christchurch: University of Canterbury.
  • 1986. A name & word index to Ngā Mōteatea. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.
  • 1987. Maori oral literature as seen by a classicist. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.
  • 1988. 'A comparison of the time-notion and of appositional style in Homer and in ancient Maori.' Prudentia 20.2: 4–19.
  • 1989. 'Some reflections on traditional Maori carving.' The journal of the Polynesian Society 98.2, 147–166.
  • 1992. The story of Maui by Te Rangikaheke. Christchurch: University of Canterbury.
  • 1998. Ancient Maori cosmologies from the Wairarapa. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.
  • 1998. 'Do a and o categories of "possession" in Maori express degrees of tapu?' The journal of the Polynesian Society 107.4: 381–383.
  • 2004. The birth of the universe. Te whānautanga o te ao tukupū. Auckland: Reed Publishing.