Classical Scholar
As a classical scholar, Raven's interests were in ancient philosophy. In 1957 he published with Geoffrey Kirk The Pre-Socratic philosophers, a standard work for undergraduates still in use today. Raven contributed the chapters relating to the Italian tradition (Pythagoras of Samos, Alcmaeon of Croton, Pre-Parmenidean Pythagoreanism, Parmenides of Elea, Zeno of Elea, Melissus of Samos, Philolaus of Croton and Eurytus of Croton) and on Anaxagoras and Archelaus.
As Senior Tutor at King's in the 1960s he turned the college to the left telling public schools that their boys could no longer expect to swan in as before.
Raven was the undergraduate tutor of Myles Burnyeat who would subsequently become the fifth Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University.
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Famous quotes containing the words classical and/or scholar:
“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
—Anonymous, Anonymous.
Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)
“Men should not labor foolishly like brutes, but the brain and the body should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together, and then the work will be of such a kind that when the body is hungry the brain will be hungry also, and the same food will suffice for both; otherwise the food which repairs the waste energy of the overwrought body will oppress the sedentary brain, and the degenerate scholar will come to esteem all food vulgar, and all getting a living drudgery.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)