James B. Greenough

Who was James B. Greenough?

James Bradstreet Greenough, United States classical scholar, was born in Portland, Maine.

He graduated at Harvard in 1856, studied one year at the Harvard Law School, was admitted to the Michigan bar and practised in Marshall, Michigan, until 1865, when he was appointed tutor in Latin at Harvard. In 1873 he became assistant professor, and in 1883 professor of Latin, a post which he resigned hardly six weeks before his death at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Following the lead of Goodwin's Moods and Tenses, he set himself to study Latin historical syntax, and in 1870 published Analysis of the Latin Subjunctive, a brief treatise, privately printed, of much originality and value, and in many ways coinciding with Berthold Delbrück's Gebrauch des Conjunctivs und Optativs in Sanskrit und Griechischen, which, however, quite overshadowed the Analysis.

In 1872 appeared A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges, founded on Comparative Grammar, by Joseph A. Allen and James B. Greenough, a work done with great critical care. His theory of cum-constructions is that adopted and developed by William Gardner Hale.