Robinson Ellis

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Robinson Ellis (September 5, 1834 – October 10, 1913) was an English classical scholar.

He was born at Barming, near Maidstone, and was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, Rugby School, and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1858 he became fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and in 1870 professor of Latin at University College, London. In 1876 he returned to Oxford, where from 1883 to 1893 he held the university readership in Latin. In 1893 he succeeded Henry Nettleship as professor.

His chief work was on Catullus, whom he began to study in 1859. In the course of his research he discovered an important early manuscript of Catullus, named the Codex Oxoniensis. However, Ellis did not recognise the importance of his own discovery, and failed to consult it for his Commentary on Catullus (1876), thereby attracting criticism. In 1889 he produced a second, enlarged edition, which resulted its author's recognition as an authority on Catullus. Professor Ellis quoted largely from the early Italian commentators, maintaining that the land where the Renaissance originated had done more for scholarship than is commonly recognized. He has supplemented his critical work by a translation (1871, dedicated to Alfred Tennyson) of the poems in the metres of the originals.

Another author to whom Professor Ellis devoted many years' study was Manilius, the astrological poet. In 1891 he published Nodes Manilianae, a series of dissertations on the Astronomica, with emendations. He also treated Avianus, Velleius Paterculus and the Christian poet Orientius, whom he edited for the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum. He edited the Ibis of Ovid, the Aetna of the younger Lucilius, and contributed to the Anecdota Oxoniensia various unedited Bodleian and other manuscripts. In 1907 he published Appendix Vergiliana (an edition of the minor poems); in 1908 The Annalist Licinianus.