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This webpage reproduces an article in the American Journal of Philology Vol. 60, No. 3 (1939), pp273-287. The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know!

 p273  Tenney Frank

Tenney Frank, Professor of Latin in the Johns Hopkins University since 1919, died after a brief illness at Oxford, England, on April 3rd in the sixty-third year of his age. At the time of his death he was incumbent of the chair established by the late George Eastman for a visiting American professor.

When I met Frank for the first time in 1901 he was a handsome young man of the Scandinavian type, with a copious head of blond hair. His parentage was Swedish on both sides. An ancestor had been assigned the name of Frank in the Swedish army and chose to retain it upon his discharge.

He was born near Clay Center, Kansas, on May 19th, 1876. Of his boyhood he was accustomed to speak with a curious appreciation and gratitude. It seemed to him a precious personal asset that he had been permitted to grow up in a genuinely American small town and rural community, where pioneer standards of conduct continued strong. In the course of time the conviction grew upon him also that some experience of farm life is essential to historians, especially historians of Greece and Rome, dealing, as they must, with countries and races whose economy in the main was agricultural. It gave him similar satisfaction to have enjoyed some acquaintance with mercantile employment in Kansas City and Chicago during high school and college vacations, especially with the Swift Packing Company. His mind was both receptive and retentive, and few will doubt that this casual training of his youth became a fructifying influence in later years.

His secondary schooling in Kansas City proved pivotal for his choice of a calling. He there attracted the notice of a forceful,  p274 eccentric, and somewhat theatrical teacher of German birth and education, by name, von Minckwitz. It was this man who aroused Frank's pride in himself and made him conscious of the challenge that lies in classical studies to the lad of parts. This predilection was not negatived by his association with Professor A. T. Walker of the University of Kansas, from which he won the degree of A. B. in 1897 with the highest distinction and the Phi Beta Kappa key. He received his A. M. the following year.

Professor Walker interested Frank in syntactical investigations, which were then at the height of their vogue. It was not unnatural therefore that he should apply for a fellow­ship in the University of Chicago, where the outstanding reputation of William Gardner Hale was exercising a powerful attraction. Frank speedily won a place among Hale's preferred pupils and a renewal of his fellow­ship at the end of the first year; subsequently he was Instructor in Latin for three years. He received his Ph. D. in 1903, his dissertation being entitled Attraction of Mood in Early Latin. This was followed, after his appointment to Bryn Mawr College in 1904, by syntactical articles in Classical Philology and the American Journal of Philology, which included one entitled "The Use of the Optative in the Edda."

His mentality, however, was too robust to be permanently employed with the metaphysics of moods and tenses, nor was Hale, nor any of the other distinguished scholars under whom he studied in Chicago — Hendrickson, Abbott, Capps, Shorey, Buck — destined to give definite direction to his researches. It was at Bryn Mawr that he began to discover his proper field and interest as history. Already in 1909 an essay treating of Roman imperialism in Greece, published in Classical Philology, pointed the way to his true north. His first sabbatical leave took him to Göttingen and Berlin, where he listened to distinguished historians. To their teaching, however, he reacted negatively; he discovered among them a distinctly mid‑European point of view, which seemed altogether too disingenuous and suspicious to account satisfactorily for the behavior of unsophisticated Roman statesmen, who were ignorant of balance of power and of the tensions and pressures that prevail in the crowded center of a modern continent. His judgments on these European scholars are briefly recorded in the preface to his Roman Imperialism, published in 1914.

 p275  The promptness with which this, his first volume, won recognition may well seem remarkable, because due recognition more often lags. In England it was especially well received and it laid the foundation of the author's reputation, which, enhanced by later publications, grew steadily to the last. I may be singular in believing this to be his best and most original work. The expedition is clear and cogent, the style keeps pace with the theme, and the general effect is satisfying and convincing. It is the most amply documented of all his writings. He was breaking new ground and very conscious of his departure from types of interpretation prevailing in Europe. He was really looking at Roman History from the point of view of one whose early conditioning was distinctively American. Kansas and the Middle West had furnished the background. Frank would not have been more genuinely American had he been descended from the Pilgrim Fathers.

The historian works always under the disadvantage of being compelled to discover his own frontiers. Frank had chosen the hard way — "intellectual pioneering," he called it — and he continued with incessant labor to break one frontier after another. A year spent in Rome as the annual professor in the American School, 1916‑17, afforded him opportunity to familiarize himself with the physical surroundings of Rome and Latium, excursions which contributed much to the Economic History of Rome, published in 1920. This was to have been followed by a second volume, but the need of it was forestalled by the publication of Rostovtzeff's Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. This mischance, which left Frank's volume incomplete, he had opportunity to repair by the addition of five chapters on the imperial period when a second edition appeared in 1927. This is a most perspicuous work and highly esteemed both within and beyond the domain of classical scholar­ship.

In 1923 the harvest of a dozen years of economic and political studies was condensed for the benefit of the college student and the general reader in the volume modestly entitled A History of Rome, which combines the characteristic clarity and freshness of treatment with the usual sanity and self-restraint. In many universities it continues to be deservedly preferred as a textbook. The volume entitled Roman Buildings of the Republic, 1924, was the fruit of two years spent in Rome as professor in charge  p276 of the School of Classical Studies in the American Academy. Although expert assistance was secured for the preparation of this work, he did not lack special qualifications for it himself; in the University of Kansas he had once been offered a fellow­ship in the department of geology. His findings aroused controversy (archaeologists are quick to leap into argument), but there is no denying that the dating of ancient buildings has been greatly facilitated by the data he unearthed and compiled. An extremely useful collection of specimens of building stones is preserved in the School under his name.

The two volumes entitled Vergil, A Biography, 1922, and Catullus and Horace, Two Poets in Their Environment, 1928, exhibit no less the originality that is incidental to the continuous progress toward new frontiers. The writer regards his problems from the firm footing of sound and extensive historical knowledge. One is reminded of the principle laid down by Epicurus that the student must refrain from turning his attention to the particulars of truth before he has mastered the view of the whole. In popularity these volumes possibly surpass the rest of his writings, as the frequency of citation would indicate. The biography of Vergil, however, is more often cited abroad, and is regarded as marking a substantial advance in our knowledge of the poet and his environment.

It has been objected from time to time that Frank's books might well have been more abundantly documented. This criticism is raised here for the purpose of pointing out that he never engaged in the game of bibliographical chess, which has deflected not a few from the true objectives of scholar­ship. No one could have been more conscientious in ascertaining pertinent facts, but, once these were assembled, his care was focused upon the reasonableness of his interpretation, the truth or falsity of which no footnote could establish. As an excellent illustration of this attitude may be mentioned the chapter on "The Roman Family" in his Aspects of Social Behavior in Ancient Rome. This lecture fills thirty-four pages, supported by half a page of notes, but it is a consistent picture of the real power and influence of Roman matrons within the framework of a theoretically absolute patria potestas, such as the reader would vainly seek in a fat volume of Friedländer. The value depends primarily upon the argumentation.

 p277  If the authorities of Johns Hopkins believed they were making a fair speculation by engaging Frank's services in 1919, it became clear before many years that the fair speculation had developed into a sound investment. Universities need prestige, and only a capable staff can bring and maintain real prestige. Apart from the deserved reputation won by the publications already mentioned, Frank was the recipient of many honors. He was made professor in charge of the School of Classical Studies in the American Academy in Rome in 1922‑23 and again in 1924‑25. In the latter year he was American delegate to the Union Académique Internationale. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy, of the Swedish Royal Society of Letters, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society; and he was give the degree of L. H. D. by Union College in 1938. His numerous briefer writings were welcomed by learned periodicals of both America and Europe. He was invited to accept appointments to the staffs of universities more amply endowed than Johns Hopkins, though he chose to remain loyal to the institution which, after Bryn Mawr, had given him his first opportunity for a scholar­ly career. Such decisions, of course, are the resultant of mixed emotional forces, but gratitude and loyalty were paramount in this instance.

In the other pan of the scale, over against the honor, must always be weighed the toil:

When the strain of protracted labor at the desk began to exact a visible toll in the middle nineteen-twenties, medical advice encountered a somewhat rebellious patient. Even the one who had his health, happiness, and welfare most at heart persuaded him with difficulty to be content with a less arduous program of work. It is especially irksome for a vigorous man to diminish his pace. "You know," Frank had said to me more than once, "I am strong." With great reluctance he consented to the retreat, devoting more of his time to the study of migratory birds and of wild flowers, especially native ferns, of which he assembled a notable collection in his Baltimore garden.

Even so he continued to accomplish the work of a robust man.  p278 At the same time new honors began to claim their quantum of time, thought and energy. He was invited to become a contributor to the Cambridge Ancient History, in which his first chapters appeared in 1928. In the same year he became President of the American Philological Association. In 1929 he delivered the Horace White Lectures at Bryn Mawr College, which, with Johns Hopkins, shared his loyalty at all times. He gave the Sather Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1929‑30; these were published under the title Life and Literature in the Roman Republic, 1930. In the same year appeared his contribution to the translation of Cornelius van Bynkershoek's Quaestiones Iuris Publici. In the following year was published Aspects of Social Behavior in Ancient Rome, the five Martin Classical Lectures, delivered at Oberlin College. In June, 1932, he was invited by the British Academy to deliver under the Henriette Hertz trust the annual lecture on a master mind, for which he chose Cicero. Throughout these years the Latin Seminary at Johns Hopkins had demanded an increasing share of his attention and to these duties was added in 1936 the editor­ship of the American Journal of Philology.

These successive indications of the esteem and confidence with which he was regarded by his co‑workers in no way undermined Frank's quiet and native humility. He was equally modest in his age and in his youth. It might have seemed to those who knew him longest and best that he was rather driven by an inborn energy than lured by the external prizes of success in his chosen calling. He lacked the vanity that turns some aside from serious purposes. It would never have occurred to him, for example, that he might claim to be a linguist, although he was bilingual from childhood, extended his knowledge of Swedish to include Norwegian and Old Norse, acquired French and German at an early age, and later became fluent in Italian. Languages were to him only tools. His experiences as a traveler in Europe, many of them diverting, some unpleasant, and a few dangerous — once in Sicily he was threatened with arrest as a German spy, on account of his Nordic mien — might justifiably have produced a raconteur, but few of his friends heard of his adventures. In conversation he would turn to music or domestic politics or foreign affairs, concerning which he held positive opinions, based upon sound knowledge and inveterate habits of observation and reflection.

 p279  He was not merely indifferent to the temptations of vanity; he was positively hostile toward them. The suggestion that his portrait be painted as a token of the esteem of foreign pupils aroused his anger, and the genuineness of his veto was not mistakable. At the same time he placed a just value upon himself and keenly appreciated recognition, but upon grounds of merit alone and from those who knew. He desired to leave as his monument the devotion of well-trained students and a certain concrete thing, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome. From the time that he first found his true field of labor while in Bryn Mawr College, he had conceived a passion for finishing the task in hand. Toward each new frontier in turn he labored with single-minded and pertinacious industry. The project most at his heart had been the Economic History of 1920. The revised and enlarged edition of 1927 did not entirely satisfy him. He felt its incompleteness to be a challenge. A survey of the whole Empire was to be his true magnum opus, his monument.

Toward the attainment of this last and chief objective Frank marshaled and conserved his whole available energy; and before he left Baltimore for his year as Eastman Professor at Oxford he enjoyed the deep satisfaction of seeing four volumes upon the shelves and the whole undertaking, apart from the Rockefeller grant which had helped in the publication, on its way to becoming a self-liquidating investment. The first volume, which appeared in 1933, was written by himself. The following three are by eminent American, British, German, and French collaborators, two of them former pupils of Frank, T. R. S. Broughton and R. M. Haywood. The fifth and last volume, like the first, was fortunately almost complete at the time of his death.

Mrs. Frank was Grace Edith Mayer, whom he married in 1907. This marriage was a genuine partner­ship. A scholar in her own right, she shared all her husband's labors and diversions alike, and he esteemed her criticisms. The inconspicuous G. F. on the dedication page of his Roman Imperialism and the To Grace Frank of his Catullus and Horace were more than gestures of gallantry. No less unison was evident in their social life than in their vocations and amusements; and students and friends of more equal age will recall with like regret and with touching memory the genial, cultured, and unaffected atmosphere of friendliness that prevailed in their home.

 p280  When a man has died, there is scant consolation in recalling that he lived a rounded life, practiced the four virtues, attempted much, accomplished much, and all but finished his appointed tasks. As one grows older it becomes no easier through use to contemporary the chiseling of the black theta above the name of a particularly beloved friend. Tenney Frank was a reincarnated Quintilius:

Norman W. DeWitt

Victoria College, University of Toronto

The death of Tenney Frank is a heavy loss to many enterprises and associations, to each in a special way, for each had special need of him; to all alike it means the removal of a companion whose integrity of heart, steadfastness of purpose, and unfaltering willingness of effort made of his wisdom a living instrument for the common good. No friends or fellow workers can feel this deprivation more than do his associates on the editorial board of the American Journal of Philology; yet we know that the only tribute he would wish, the only meet tribute to the conscientious toil of his own editorial direction, is the ever-present memory of his lofty standards in the continuation of the work of this Journal for which he gave so much of himself.

It is peculiarly appropriate to print here in chronological order the titles of his writings, for the list is a mirror in which are reflected the ever-widening circles of his interest and knowledge, a pattern of the integrated development of a great scholar. The reflection is of two dimensions only but fortunately the sovereign third, the depth of Tenney Frank's understanding, lies faithfully preserved behind these titles to be felt by all who read the works themselves.

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