1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Capps, Edward

CAPPS, EDWARD (1866—), American classical scholar, was born at Jacksonville, Ill., Dec. 21 1866. He was educated at Illinois College (A.B. 1887) and Yale (Ph.D. 1891). In 1890 he was appointed tutor at Yale. In 1892 he joined the faculty of the newly-founded university of Chicago as professor of Greek language and literature, remaining such until 1907. In 1903 he was special lecturer at Harvard, and during the next two years studied at Athens and Halle. During 1906–7 he was managing editor of Classical Philology, in 1907 was elected president of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and the same year was called to Princeton as professor of classics. In 1914 he was elected president of the American Philological Association, and in 1917 was Turnbull lecturer on poetry at Johns Hopkins. In 1918 he was appointed head of the American Red Cross commission to Greece with the rank of colonel. In 1920 he was appointed minister to Greece, resigning in March 1921 and returning to Princeton. A leading authority on the Greek theatre, he contributed much to philological journals.

His works include The Stage in the Greek Theatre (1891); From Homer to Theocritus (1901); The Introduction of Comedy into the City Dionysia: a Chronological Study in Greek Literary History (1903) and Four Plays of Menander (1910). He was editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Decennial Publications, 29 volumes.