Brooks Otis

Brooks Otis (1908-1977) was educated at Harvard (BA, 1929; MA, 1930; PhD, 1935). While there he founded New Frontier magazine with Reuben Brower. After his doctorate, he taught at Hobart College from 1935 to 1957, starting as assistant professor and lecturer in Sociology and ending as Professor of Classics. He resigned in protest in 1957, and taught at the American University of Beirut for one year before accepting a position at Stanford as Professor of Classics. While there he served as Executive Head of the Department and in 1965 helped found the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. In 1970 he succeeded T. Robert S. Broughton as Paddison Professor of Latin at UNC. Otis won many honors: he was frequently called as a visiting professor at other universities, was twice a Guggenheim Fellow (1952-53 and 1973-74), twice a Fulbright Fellow (1953-54, 1964), a Smith-Mundt Fellow (1957-58), a Dumbarton Oaks Fellow (1969), and an NEH Fellow (1973). He is best known for his two books on Latin epic, Virgil. A Study in Civilized Poetry (1963) and Ovid as an Epic Poet (1966). At the time of his death he was preparing a study of Aeschylus, which appeared in 1981, after editing by E. Christian Kopff, as Cosmos & tragedy : an essay on the meaning of Aeschylus.