A. H. J. (Abel Hendy Jones) Greenidge

Born in Barbados on December 22, 1865, Abel Hendy Jones Greenidge was educated at Harrison College and won the Barbados Scholarship in 1884, which took him to Balliol College, Oxford. He earned first-class results in both Classical Moderations and the final classical school, later taking his MA and a D.Litt., and went on to become a fellow, lecturer, and tutor at Hertford College, with additional teaching in ancient history at Brasenose College.

Greenidge wrote on both law and ancient history, and even in a short life he produced substantial work. His first book, Infamia: Its Place in Roman Public and Private Law, appeared in 1894. He also published A Handbook of Greek Constitutional History and Roman Public Life, and his larger Roman history project reached print in A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate, the only completed volume of what seems to have been intended as a much bigger undertaking.

He died suddenly in Oxford on March 11, 1906, at just 40 years old. Even so, his reputation endured: later listings of his work continue to present him as an important scholar of Roman law and history, and in Barbados he is still remembered as one of the island’s notable classical scholars.