Richard Broxton Onians
Richard Broxton Onians (1899–1986) was a British classicist who became the Hildred Carlile Professor of Latin at the University of London. His best-known book is The Origins of European Thought (1951), a wide study of how ideas about the body, the mind, the soul, the world, time and fate helped shape ancient and European thinking.
Onians was born in Liverpool on January 11, 1899. He served in World War I and then earned a first-class degree in classics at the University of Liverpool. In 1922 he began research at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won the Hare Prize. He taught at Liverpool from 1925 to 1933 and was a professor of classics at the University of Wales from 1933 to 1935. In 1936 he became Hildred Carlile Professor of Latin at the University of London, a post he held until his retirement in 1966, afterward becoming an emeritus professor.
His doctoral work on Homer earned the Hare Prize in 1926, with a condition to publish by 1929. He received an extension, and his major book circulated in manuscript before appearing in 1951 as The Origins of European Thought. A corrected 1954 edition followed, and Cambridge University Press released a paperback edition in 1988, later reissued in 2011. The Times obituary noted the book’s broad impact and usefulness, even as it acknowledged it did not convince everyone. Jules Brody later placed Onians among notable European critics, though his book has been underappreciated in some circles.
Onians married Rosalind Lathbury, a former student, on December 27, 1937. They had two sons, Dick and John, and four daughters. He served on the council of the Association of University Teachers from 1946 to 1953. Onians died on May 21, 1986.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 02:20 (CET).