John Atkinson (professor)
John Edward Atkinson was a British and South African classicist. He was Emeritus Professor of Classics, as well as a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts, at the University of Cape Town.
Early life
Atkinson studied at Durham University. He took a BA in Classical and General Literature in 1961, where he was classmates with R. M. Errington.Academic career
Following his undergraduate studies he joined the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland as Assistant Lecturer. He moved to the University of South Africa a year later to take up a Lectureship in Ancient History. In 1965 he joined the University of Cape Town as Lecturer, completing a PhD at this institution in 1971. His first book, A commentary on Q. Curtius Rufus' Historiae Alexandri Magni Books 3 and 4, was published in 1980.Atkinson's area of specialization for much of his career was the Latin historian, Quintus Curtius Rufus. Joseph Roisman, in the Oxford Bibliographies entry on Alexander the Great, labelled Atkinson as the 'leading commentator on Curtius'. Jacek Rzepka, in a Bryn Mawr Classical Review article on Atkinson's work, described him as 'a scholar who has almost monopolized studies in Curtius Rufus for two decades'.
With the construction of the Apartheid system, Atkinson's political leanings saw him placed under monitoring by the domestic security service. He was once contacted and warned not to go ahead with a long-planned public lecture 'on the death of the tyrant Julius Caesar' after the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd earlier the same day.
Atkinson was an active member of the Classical Association of South Africa, where he was elected onto the Executive Committee as Treasurer, Vice-Chairperson and as Chairperson. He served as a member of the editorial boards of both Acta Classica and of Akroterion. In later life he developed an interest in the Roman general Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus, who became the subject of his last scholarly publication. One of his more unusual examples of scholarship was a 2021 article written in collaboration with maxillofacial surgeon Rushdi Hendricks that examined the wounds suffered by Philip of Macedon.