Lewis Campbell (classicist)

Lewis Campbell (/ˈkæmbəl/; 3 September 1830 – 25 October 1908) was a Scottish classical scholar.

Campbell was born in Edinburgh. His father, Robert Campbell, R.N., was a first cousin of Thomas Campbell, the poet.

Campbell was educated at Edinburgh Academy, the University of Glasgow, Trinity College, Oxford and Balliol College, Oxford. He was fellow and tutor of Queen's College, Oxford (1855–1858), vicar of Milford, Hampshire (1858–1863), and professor of Greek at the University of St Andrews (1863–1894). In 1894, he was elected an honorary fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. From 1894 to 1896 he gave the Gifford Lectures, which were published in 1898.

As a scholar he is best known by his work on Sophocles and Plato. His published works include:

• Sophocles Greek text with English notes in two volumes (2nd ed., 1879)
• The Sophistes and Politicus of Plato Greek text with English notes (1867)
• Sophocles, The Seven Plays in English Verse (1883)
• The Theaetetus of Plato Greek text with English notes (2nd ed., 1883)
• Republic, the Greek text, in three volumes (with Benjamin Jowett, 1894)
• Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett in two volumes (with Evelyn Abbott, 1897)
• Letters of B. Jowett (1899)
• Life of James Clerk Maxwell (with W Garnett, new ed., 1884)
• A Guide to Greek Tragedy for English Readers (1891)
• Religion in Greek Literature (1898) Gifford Lectures
• On the Nationalisation of the Old English Universities (1901)
• Verse translations of the plays of Aeschylus (1890)
• Sophocles (1896)
• Plato's Republic Oxford lectures (1902)
• Tragic Drama in Aeschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare (1904)
• Paralipomena Sophoclea (1907).

Sir W.D. Ross had recognized the importance of stylometric methods in Plato chronology which Campbell had introduced in his editions of the Sophistes and Politicus of 1869. Recent scholars such as Charles H. Kahn and Diskin Clay, have each advanced the ordering and grouping of Plato's dialogues according to the same method.