Willem Jacob Verdenius (3 April 1913 – 23 June 1998) was a Dutch classicist.

Life

Born at The Hague on 3 April 1913,^[1] he completed his PhD thesis on Parmenides at Utrecht University in 1942. He became Professor of Greek language and literature at Utrecht University in 1947.^[2] In 1965 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[3] He died at Zeist on 23 June 1998.^[1]

Works

• Parmenides; some comments on his poem, 1942.
• (with Jan Hendrik Waszink) Aristotle on coming-to-be and passing-away; some comments, 1946.
• Mimesis; Plato's doctrine of artistic imitation and its meaning to us, 1949.
• Platenatlas bij Homerus, 1955.
• Beknopte bibliographie voor de studie der Griekse taal- en letterkunde, 1960.
• Homer, the educator of the Greeks, 1970.
• Pindar's Seventh Olympian Ode. A commentary, 1972 - a new edition published in 1987, see below
• (with A. H. M. Kessels) A concise bibliography of Greek language and literature, 1979.
• A commentary on Hesiod Works and days, 1985.
• Commentaries on Pindar, in 2 vols.:
  • Vol. 1. Commentaries on Olympian 3, 7, 12, 14 (Brill, Mnemosyne Supplement 97, 1987)
  • Vol. 2. Commentaries on Olympian 1, 10; Nemean 11; Isthmian 2 (Brill, Mnemosyne Supplement 101, 1988)
  • A third volume with commentaries on Pythian 1, 8, 10 was proposed in the preface to vol. 1, but never published