author

Charles Norris Cochrane

1889–1945

A Canadian historian and philosopher, he wrote with unusual breadth about the ancient world and the rise of Christianity. His best-known book, Christianity and Classical Culture, helped make him a lasting voice in the study of Rome, history, and ideas.

1 Audiobook

David Thompson, the explorer

David Thompson, the explorer

by Charles Norris Cochrane

About the author

Born in Omemee, Ontario, in 1889, Charles Norris Cochrane studied classics at the University of Toronto, where he graduated in 1911, and then continued at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He returned to Toronto early in his career and went on to spend most of his working life at the University of Toronto, eventually becoming a professor and head of Greek and Roman History.

Cochrane also served during the First World War before resuming academic life. He published books on David Thompson and Thucydides, but he is best remembered for Christianity and Classical Culture (1940), a major study of the transition from the classical Roman world to Christian thought, especially in the age from Augustus to Augustine.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1941 and was regarded as an important scholar of ancient history and the philosophy of history. He died in Toronto in 1945, leaving behind a reputation for serious, wide-ranging thinking and for bringing big civilizational questions into the study of the ancient world.