John Temple was born in Harrow in July 1927. He was Professor of Geology at Birkbeck College, University of London until his retirement in 1992. John Temple’s interests ranged far beyond his academic discipline, however, and the Dictionary of Classical Greek Idiom and Syntax, which he began writing after his retirement, exemplified this. It also illustrates his rigour as a scholar as well as a love of words and languages, ancient and modern. Remarkably, John Temple had only begun learning ancient Greek after he retired. The dictionary was dedicated to his wife, Dorothy.

The dictionary was never quite finished but, despite this, contains a wealth of information, compiled with erudite fastidiousness. It would undoubtedly have been revised further before publication.  Nevertheless, even in its raw form, the Dictionary of Classical Greek Idiom and Syntax should prove invaluable to scholars of ancient Greek, as its author always intended.

The dictionary

The main purpose of this dictionary is to aid translation of Greek by bringing together in accessible form the common idiomatic expressions whose meaning cannot easily be inferred from the constituent words.

The meanings of such expressions are available in Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon and elsewhere, but it is difficult and time-consuming to find them, since they occur buried within articles, often of considerable length. By being displayed in a single alphabetical list of constituent words, such expressions will be much more readily accessible.