GILBERT HIGHET (portrayed by Robert J. Ball) “Representing Our Ancestors”

Gilbert Highet (1906-1978): Anthon Professor of the Latin Language and Literature, 1937-1972, Columbia University. 1928 MA Glasgow University, 1932 BA Balliol, Oxford University.

Highet was born on 22 June 1906 in Glasgow, Scotland. His father was Superintendent of Telegraphs for the West of Scotland. Highet attended Hillhead High School, where at age 11 he learned Latin and then Greek. By age 14 he could read Homer and Vergil with ease and for pleasure. By age 16 he had read Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and analyzed ten plays of Shakespeare. He received an MA in Greek and Latin from Glasgow University in 1928, where he met Helen MacInnes, who became his lifetime companion and the queen of spy story writers.

Highet received a B.A. from Balliol, Oxford, in 1932. He studied under Cyril Bailey, Maurice Bowra, and Gilbert Murray, who provided him with excellent role models for his career. There he founded the Oxford Experimental Theatre Society and composed two verse-dramas, produced in the private theatre of the Poet Laureate. On 22 September 1932, after a seven-year courtship, he married MacInnes. He taught at St. John's, Oxford, from 1933-1937 as Tutor and Fellow. In 1933 MacInnes gave birth to their son Keith, who became an international lawyer.

Highet came to Columbia University in 1937 as a Visiting Associate and within a year became a tenured Professor of Greek and Latin. He worked with Moses Hadas on revising the humanities curriculum. Serving in the British Army during World War II (1941-1946), he prepared psychological profiles of Nazi leaders based on his psychoanalysis of Roman emperors, prepared the first draft of the recently declassified Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, and became responsible for helping to recover gold reserves hidden by the Nazis.

Highet returned to Columbia in 1946, became Anthon Professor of the Latin Language and Literature in 1950, and became an American citizen in 1951. With his Scottish-English burr and his riveting, rapid-fire delivery, he dazzled generations of students with his dynamic lectures, brilliant in their organization and brimming with critical insights. Outside the classroom he served as Literary Critic for Harper's Magazine (1952-1954), Chairman of the Editorial Board of Horizon Magazine (1958-1977), and on the Board of Judges for Book-of-the-Month Club (1954-1978).

Highet's bibliography consists of roughly a thousand items. It includes 21 books: on pedagogy, on scholarly research, and essays of a general nature. The Art of Teaching became an instant pedagogical classic. His scholarly books consist of The Classical Tradition, Juvenal the Satirist, Poets in a Landscape, The Anatomy of Satire (which received the APA Award of Merit), and The Speeches in Vergil's Aeneid. His five books of essays contain lectures presented on his radio program of the 1950s, carried by over 300 stations in the United States and Canada.

Highet died on January 20, 1978, of cancer. Columbia held a Memorial Service for him on the Ides of March, honoring one of the most recognized and most accomplished classical scholars of his time. Alan Cameron, his successor as Anthon Professor, remarked that probably never again would the profession see the entire field of Classics through the perspective of one man's vision. In awarding him the D.Litt. a year before his death, Columbia President William McGill described him not only as the defender of the classical tradition but also as the embodiment of it.