1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mayor, John Eyton Bickersteth

MAYOR, JOHN EYTON BICKERSTETH (1825–), English classical scholar, was born at Baddegama, Ceylon, on the 28th of January 1825, and educated in England at Shrewsbury School and St John’s College, Cambridge. From 1863 to 1867 he was librarian of the university, and in 1872 succeeded H. A. J. Munro in the professorship of Latin. His best-known work, an edition of thirteen satires of Juvenal, is marked by an extraordinary wealth of illustrative quotations. His Bibliographical Clue to Latin Literature (1873), based on E. Hübner’s Grundriss zu Vorlesungen über die römische Litteraturgeschichte is a valuable aid to the student, and his edition of Cicero’s Second Philippic is widely used. He also edited the English works of J. Fisher, bishop of Rochester, i. (1876); Thomas Baker’s History of St John’s College, Cambridge (1869); Richard of Cirencester’s Speculum historiale de gestis regum Angliae 447–1066 (1863–1869); Roger Ascham’s Schoolmaster (new ed., 1883); the Latin Heptateuch (1889); and the Journal of Philology.

His brother, Joseph Bickersteth Mayor (1828–), classical scholar and theologian, was educated at Rugby and St John’s College, Cambridge, and from 1870 to 1879 was professor of classics at King’s College, London. His most important classical works are an edition of Cicero’s De natura deorum (3 vols., 1880–1885) and Guide to the Choice of Classical Books (3rd ed., 1885, with supplement, 1896). He also devoted attention to theological literature and edited the epistles of St James (2nd ed., 1892), St Jude and St Peter (1907), and the Miscellanies of Clement of Alexandria (with F. J. A. Hort, 1902). From 1887 to 1893 he was editor of the Classical Review. His Chapters on English Metre (1886) reached a second edition in 1901.