Obituary: Professor Donald Earl

Donald Earl was a noted Latin scholar and historian of Ancient Rome and the last holder of the Chair of Classics at Hull University before the university dispensed with the subject in 1990.

Brought up in Cambridge, where he shone at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, he went on to St Catharine's, Cambridge in 1950 after National Service, and after obtaining Firsts in both parts of the Tripos stayed on to research on Sallust under A.H. McDonald.

In 1955 he was appointed to the Latin Department at Leeds University, where, apart from a year at North-Western University at Evanston, Illinois, he stayed until moving to Hull in 1978. In those years he produced his four books: The Political Thought of Sal-lust (1961), based on his doctoral dissertation and concerned mainly with the historian's concept of virtus; a less persuasive study, Tiberius Gracchus (1963); The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome (1967), where he elaborated his earlier treatment of virtus; and The Age of Augustus (1968), the book of his most used by students and commercially the most successful, being translated into French and German and, according to his own account, reprinted in order to be remaindered. The notable clarity and style of these works was also a distinctive feature of his lectures.

On arrival in Hull he found a department already fully committed to an "in translation" Classical Studies degree programme, aimed at those with little or no experience of Latin or Greek, and colleagues prepared to give such students parity of esteem with traditional classicists. He joined wholeheartedly in this development, which trebled the department's productivity in less than five years, only to be frustrated, like much else, by the financial cutbacks imposed on universities in and after 1981, which hit Hull particularly hard.

It was a result of these cuts and the consequent early retirement of senior professors that he came back from holiday in summer 1983 to find himself unexpectedly the new Dean of Arts, a role in which he protected the faculty's interests so well that after his initial two-year span his colleagues twice re-elected him for a further year. This confidence in him was shared by his colleagues elsewhere, who at this same period elected him Chairman of the Council of University Classical Departments.

His pessimism about the university's future was, however, revealed when he publicly argued in the Bulletin of the Association of University Teachers that too many universities were unwisely trying to keep going all the subjects they had taught before 1981, and it was ironical that, when a new regime at Hull decided that whole departments must go, his own was to be one of them.

Before that decision was taken Earl had already offered to retire early at 57, a gesture which, although it could not save Classics, should at least have enabled the university authorities to reverse with dignity their decision to sack a philosophy lecturer simply to avoid paying his salary.

For Earl himself it did not bring an end to his service to the university, for, as well as continuing for three more years to teach Roman History to History students, he broke new ground by being appointed a Pro-Vice- Chancellor while on part-time re-engagement from 1988 to 1991.

Donald Earl's many friends at Hull University will remember him less as a scholar and in his roles as Dean of Arts and Pro-Vice-Chancellor but much more for the larger-than-life man that he was, writes John G. Bernasconi.

He somehow brought a combination of a sense of fun and of deep historical perspective to everything in which he involved himself. Behind a cloud of pipe smoke, his was the liveliest corner at any social event. He was the opposite of politically correct but was sufficiently witty to get away with it.

He founded the university's most convivial lunchtime gathering, known as Table XIII, and he was an active supporter of the Art Collection. A memorable opening of a Surrealist exhibition saw him in outlandish dress complete with lobster on leash.

He developed a love of Venice rather late in life but thereafter became a frequent visitor and a regular participant in the celebration of the Venetian Carnival in Hull. One year he found that his wearing of a Venetian plague doctor's mask greatly interfered with one of his most serious interests, the drinking of good red wine. Had he led a different life-style, he might have lived longer but he would have lived less happily and, for the period of his time in Hull, the university would have been a far less happy place.

Donald Charles Earl, Latin scholar: born Cambridge 11 February 1931; Professor of Classics, Hull University 1978- 88 (Emeritus), Dean of Arts 1983-88, Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1988-91; married (two sons, three daughters); died Hull 20 August 1996.