Florence Melian Stawell was a classical scholar.

Florence Melian Stawell, youngest daughter of Sir William Foster Stawell

William Foster Stawell

Sir William Foster Stawell KCMG was a British colonial statesman and a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia.-Early life:...

, was born at Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

 on 2 May 1869. She was named for the Melians, ancient Greek idealists from Melos of whom Thucydides had written, and was known as Melian.

She spent two years at Trinity College, the University of Melbourne

University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...

, where she was greatly influenced by the Warden, Dr Alexander Leeper, and then went to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and entered Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick, and was the second Cambridge college to admit women after Girton College...

, in the May term of 1889. She was placed in class 1 division 1 in the classical tripos of 1892 but did not take part II of the tripos. In 1894-5 Miss Stawell was a classical don at Newnham, but had to resign on account of ill-health, and henceforth lived chiefly at London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 with occasional visits to her relations in Australia.

In 1909 she published Homer and the Iliad: an Essay to determine the Scope and Character of the Original Poem, an important and scholarly contribution to the literature of the subject. In 1911 she offered an interpretation of the Phaistos Disc

Phaistos Disc decipherment claims

There are a large number of claims of decipherment of the Phaistos Disc.The claims may be categorized into linguistic decipherments, identifying the language of the inscription, and non-linguistic decipherments...

 as Homeric Greek

Homeric Greek

Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. It is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek. It later served as the basis of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry, typically in...

, syllabic writing.

In 1918 she prepared The Price of Freedom, an Anthology for all Nations, and five years later in collaboration with Francis Sydney Marvin brought out The Making of the Western Mind. She was associated with Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson , was a British historian and political activist. He led most of his life at Cambridge, where he wrote a dissertation on Neoplatonism before becoming a fellow. He was closely associated with the Bloomsbury Group.A noted pacifist, Dickinson protested against Britain's...

 in the production of Goethe and Faust; an Interpretation, which appeared in 1928. Miss Stawell's next book was a translation in English verse of the Iphigeneia at Aulis

Iphigeneia at Aulis

Iphigenia in Aulis is the last extant work of the playwright Euripides. Written between 408, after the Orestes, and 406 BC, the year of Euripides's death, the play was first produced the following year by his son or nephew, Euripides the Younger, and won the first place at the Athenian city...

of Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

, which was published in 1929, and an excellent little book in the home university library on The Growth of International Thought belongs to the same year.

She had been doing much work on the Minoan

Minoan civilization

The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BC to the 15th century BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans...

 script and in 1931 published A Clue to the Cretan Scripts. The Practical Wisdom of Goethe: an Anthology, which appeared in 1933, was partly translated by her. She died at Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

 on 9 June 1936.

Miss Stawell was an excellent classical scholar to whom Greek was one of the most living of languages. Frail of body, she had an ardent and energetic spirit, and with better health she would have taken an even more distinguished place among the classical scholars of her period. Gilbert Murray

Gilbert Murray

George Gilbert Aimé Murray, OM was an Australian born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century...

's obituary of her in The Times described her as "the most remarkable member of a most remarkable family".

External links

• K. J. McKay, 'Stawell, Florence Melian (1869 - 1936)', Australian Dictionary of Biography
  Australian Dictionary of Biography
  The Australian Dictionary of Biography is a national, co-operative enterprise, founded and maintained by the Australian National University to produce authoritative biographical articles on eminent people in Australia's history....
  
  , Volume 12, Melbourne University Pressю, 1990, pp 55-56.