Morris H. Morgan

Who was Morris H. Morgan?

Morris Hicky Morgan was professor of classical philology at Harvard University.

Although he did not receive a classical schooling in the Harvard Graduate School, Morgan would immediately after his graduation be appointed to the teaching staff. After the death of Frederic D. Allen in 1899 he succeeded to the chair of classical philology. He was praised by his fellow classicists as an interpreter of Vitruvius. His translation of Vitruvius's The Ten Books of Architecture, based on an older translation by Valentine Rose, remains in imprint today, nearly 100 years after Morgan translated it, though he died before completing it, the final parts being translated by Albert A. Howard. In his translator's note to a 2009 English edition, translator Richard Schofield writes that Morgan's translation "is certainly the best in English and deserves its longevity... and I doubt if his dignified and intelligent prose could be surpassed, even though here and there it is faintly dated."

In 1896 he was appointed Harvard University Marshall.

Morgan fell seriously ill on March 15 1910 while on a trip to New York to visit Daniel B. Fearing, the mayor of Newport, Rhode Island, and would die soon after.