This history largely comprises an overview of the various holders of Classics chairs and professorships. In addition to these personalities are many lecturers and assistants of whom comparatively less is known.

The old College

The forerunner of the University of Cape Town, the South African College (also called the South African Athenaeum) was founded in October 1829. For the first twelve years of its existence, the College was housed in the front rooms of ‘Orphan House’ (‘Weeshuis’), an orphanage on Long Street, before moving in 1841 to the Egyptian Building on the present site of UCT’s Hiddingh campus.

The College opened with three professors: the Rev. Edward Judge (Cambridge) was English Professor of Classics, the Rev. Abraham Faure (Utrecht) was Dutch Professor of Classics, and the Rev. James Adamson (Edinburgh) was Professor of Mathematics (later professor of Classics).

Judge and Faure soon resigned their Chairs (Judge in 1830 and Faure in 1831). Judge was succeeded by the Rev. John Pears (Edinburgh) and Faure was replaced by Antoine N. E. Changuion (Leiden). Pears left the College in 1835 due to lack of funds. After the eventual departure of Changuion in 1842 for similar reasons, no successor was appointed to teach Classics in Dutch, and instruction in the double medium lapsed. With both Classics professorships vacant, the Rev. Adamson filled the role from 1841 until 1850.

The English-Classics professorship was eventually filled in 1847 by Langham Dale (Oxford). Dale soon clashed with Dr Adamson over reforms needed at the College. Adamson resigned in 1850.

In 1859, Dale applied to the Surveyor General, Mr Charles Bell, for a seal for the college. Bell supplied the coat of arms which continues to be used by the university.

Dale left the College towards the end of 1859 to become Superintendent-General of Education, and the Rev. James Cameron (London), an old student of the College, took up what had then become the Chair of Classics.

Cameron left the college in 1873 to become the first registrar of the newly established University of the Cape of Good Hope (now the University of South Africa, UNISA) and was succeeded in the Chair by James Gill (Cambridge).

In 1879, Charles E. Lewis (Cambridge) was appointed to the second Chair of Classics. Gill was dismissed in 1881 and replaced by William Ritchie (Oxford) in 1882. Ritchie's main scholarly work was as a translator of Plautus' Captivi and the Trinummus and of all of the plays of Terence into parallel verse. Ritchie devoted much of his career to the development of the College.

In 1903, when the Chairs of Greek and Latin were separated, Ritchie held the Latin Chair and Lewis the Greek Chair.

In 1911 Professor George W. Vipan (Cambridge), who had previously taught at the Diocesan College (Bishops), was added as a third member of the Classics staff (the university section of Bishops had merged with that of the South African College at the end of 1910). When Vipan retired in 1916 due to ill health, two new lectureships were created: one for Greek and one for Latin. The Greek lectureship was not filled, but the Latin one was held for one year (in 1917) by J. H. Hofmeyr (Oxford).

Professor Lewis retired from the old College in 1917 after holding the chair for 38 years.

The University

The South African College was formally incorporated into the University of Cape Town in 1918. In 1917, Latin and Greek had been established as separate departments in the newly-formed Faculty of Arts with Ritchie as dean. In the same year (1917), Hofmeyr was succeeded as lecturer by Theo Le Roux (Amsterdam) who went on to hold the Greek Chair vacated by Lewis from 1919.

T. J. Haarhoff (Oxford) was appointed lecturer in Latin in 1919 but soon left for a professorship at the Witwatersrand University. After Haarhoff, W. A. Norton (Oxford) was appointed as lecturer for a short time before Benjamin Farrington (Dublin) arrived as lecturer in 1920.

The Departments of Latin and Greek were united in 1923 as the Department of Classics with a Chair of Latin and Chair of Greek.

Ritchie retired in 1929 having held the professorship of Classics for 47 years. The Ritchie Building on UCT’s Hiddingh campus is named after him.

In 1931 Theo le Roux introduced a new course taught in English on ‘Classical Culture’ for which knowledge of Latin and Greek was not essential. The course was first taught by Benjamin Farrington who had in 1930 succeeded Ritchie in the Latin Chair.

In 1950 a second ‘Classical Culture’ course taught in English was offered.

In 1955 the Latin and Greek Chairs were replaced with one Chair in ‘Language’ (the First Chair) and one in ‘Literature and Culture’ (the Second Chair).

Farrington’s successor in the First Chair was William Rollo (Glasgow) in 1934. Rollo held the Chair for almost 20 years until 1953, when he was invited to take up the post of interim principal of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, now the University of Zimbabwe. Anton H. R. E. Paap (Oxford) succeeded Rollo in 1954 and remained until 1981, serving as Dean of the Faculty of Arts for 11 years. After Paap’s retirement, the First Chair of Classics remained vacant.

Le Roux’s successor in the Second Chair was H. C. Baldry (Cambridge) in 1948. Baldry delivered the first inaugural lecture at UCT and held the Chair until 1953. For an interregnum of two years (1955-57) the Chair was occupied by George P. Goold (London) who later went on to become the general editor of the Loeb Classical Library. Maurice W. M. Pope (Cambridge) succeeded Goold in 1957 and remained until 1968 when he resigned in protest over the Mafeje affair (he strongly opposed the intervention of the apartheid government in university policy). André M. Hugo (Utrecht) filled the Chair after Pope from 1969 until his death in 1975.

In 1959 the culture courses were diversified into 'Ancient History and Political Thought' (later 'Ancient History and Classical Archaeology') and 'Greek and Roman Literature and Philosophy'.

Lydia Baumbach (Cambridge) was senior lecturer from 1965, and in 1976 she was appointed to the Second Chair of Classics which she held until her retirement in 1987. Baumbach was known for her research on Mycenaean language and the Linear B writing system. After her retirement, she campaigned with vigour against a plan to split up the Department.

The 1970s and 1980s saw the extension of what had become 'Ancient History' and 'Greek and Roman Literature and Thought' into two three-year undergraduate programmes each with Greek and Roman options. These led to an honours degree in Ancient History (by the early 1980s) and an honours degree in Greek and Roman Literature and Thought (by the mid 1990s) alongside the existing degrees in Greek, Latin, and Classics. 

In 1979, Kathleen Coleman (Oxford), a former student of the University, was appointed as lecturer. Kathleen left UCT in 1993 to become the Chair of Latin at Trinity College Dublin and has, since 1998, been the James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard.

In 1978, Margaret (Maggie) Mezzabotta (Bristol) was appointed as lecturer and became senior lecturer in 1997 after gaining her PhD from UCT (1987). She specialised in Greek Tragedy and ancient botany and medicine. Maggie died tragically in a car accident in 2000. The Mezzabotta Memorial Lecture is held in her memory.

In 1989, Richard Whitaker (St Andrews) was appointed to the remaining Chair of Classics vacated by Baumbach. Whitaker retired in 2007.

John Atkinson (Durham) was senior lecturer from 1965 and became Professor in 2000. Atkinson was the last Dean of the Faculty of Arts, before its transfiguration into the Faculty of Humanities. Atkinson retired in 2001.

In 1999, Classics, French, German, and Italian were merged into the Department of Modern and Classical Languages (MCL). In 2002 MCL was merged into the School of Languages and Literatures.