University Times

Arthur M. Young, professor emeritus of classics, died Jan. 9, 1998. He was 97.

Young taught at Pitt from 1946 until his retirement in 1968; he was chair of the classics department from 1946 until 1965.

Besides teaching a wide range of Greek and Latin courses, Young also taught two highly popular classics course, The Legacy of Greece and The Legacy of Rome. These courses stressed the enduring importance of classical civilization through the ages.

He was educated at Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1930. His Harvard dissertation broke new ground in the study of Athenian comic poets' treatment of Sophocles. In light of Aristophanes' respectful treatment of Sophocles in "The Frogs," it had generally been believed that Sophocles was more or less "immune" from comic parody, but Young's dissertation showed that there are in fact many verbal and semantic parodies of Sophocles in Attic comedy, just as there are of Aeschylus and Euripides.

Young wrote a number of books, mainly on the artistic and literary treatment of classical themes in later literature. He also wrote a history surveying the study of Greek and Latin at Pitt from 1787 to 1957 entitled "The Voice That Speaketh Clear." His other books include "Legend Builders of the West," "Echoes of Two Cultures" and "Troy and Her Legend." These deal respectively with Greek and Roman mythology, the legends associated with two historical figures (Cyrus the Great and Lucretia), and the Trojan War