Christopher Rowe (classicist)

Prof Christopher Rowe in 2012

Christopher James Rowe OBE (born 1944) is a British classical scholar. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Classics and Ancient History of Durham University, England, where he was Head of Department 2004–2008. He is a former President of the Classical Association, and was appointed OBE in 2009 for "services to scholarship".

Thought on Plato

Rowe translated into English and gave an innovative interpretation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Plato's dialogues Theaetetus and Sophist.

Rowe's work includes consideration of the political ideals of Plato's Republic in relation to the details of political practice described in the Statesman and the Laws. In the volume Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing, Rowe argued that "Plato remains throughout essentially a Socratic".

He delivered the Stephen MacKenna lecture at Dublin University in 2009. In years prior he had also been invited to talk about mythology in primary schools.

Selected publications

• Written with George Boys-Stones The Circle of Socrates: Readings in the First-Generation Socratics (edited and translated) Hackett Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9781603849364
• Plato, Republic (new translation, with introduction and notes) Penguin, 2012, ISBN 9780141442433
• The Last Days of Socrates (translated with introduction and notes) Penguin, 2010, ISBN 9780140455496
• Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing Cambridge University Press, 2007, ISBN 9780521859325
• Written with Terry Penner Plato's Lysis Cambridge University Press, 2005 ISBN 9780521791304