author
Hubert Joseph Treston
1888–1959
A classicist from University College Cork, he wrote a focused and still-interesting study of how blood-vengeance worked in early Greek society. His best-known book, Poine, brings Homeric law, custom, and myth into sharp conversation.
1 Audiobook
Poine: a study in ancient Greek blood-vengeance
by Hubert Joseph Treston
About the author
Born in 1888, Hubert Joseph Treston was an Irish scholar of the ancient world who spent most of his academic life at University College Cork. Records identify him as Professor of Ancient Classics there from 1915 until his retirement in December 1958, and he also served for many years as Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
He is best known for Poine: a Study in Ancient Greek Blood-Vengeance, published in 1923. In that book, Treston examines how ideas of revenge, compensation, and justice appear in early Greek literature, especially Homer, and he approaches the subject with the steady, analytical style of a lifelong teacher.
Treston died in 1959. Although little biographical detail is widely available online, his work has remained accessible through major digital libraries, which has helped keep his scholarship in circulation for modern readers interested in classics, ancient law, and Greek social history.