19 Facts About Philemon Holland

Philemon Holland was an English schoolmaster, physician and translator.

Philemon Holland is known for the first English translations of several works by Livy, Pliny the Elder, and Plutarch, and for translating William Camden's Britannia into English.

Philemon Holland, born at Chelmsford, Essex, in 1552, was the son of John Holland, a member of the same Norfolk family as Sir John Holland, 1st Baronet.

Philemon Holland's fellowship was terminated automatically when he married in 1579.

Philemon Holland became usher at King Henry VIII School, founded in 1545 by John Hales.

Philemon Holland wore a suit of black satin for the occasion, and his oration is said to have been "much praised".

Philemon Holland's wife, Anne, who died in 1627 at the age of 72, is buried in the church, where there is a Latin epitaph to her composed by her son, Henry.

Philemon Holland combined his teaching and medical practice with the translation of classical and contemporary works.

Philemon Holland's first published translation, The Romane Historie, was the first complete rendering of Livy's Latin history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, into English.

In 1601 Philemon Holland published in two folios "an equally huge translation" from Latin, Pliny the Elder's The Historie of the World, dedicated to Sir Robert Cecil, then the Queen's Principal Secretary.

Indeed, after four centuries, Philemon Holland is still the only translator of this work to attempt to evoke its literary richness and beauty.

In 1603 Philemon Holland published The Philosophie, commonly called, the Morals, dedicating it to King James.

Philemon Holland followed the Greek of Plutarch's original, and made use as well of a Latin translation and of the French translation of 1572 by Jacques Amyot.

Philemon Holland is said to have claimed that he wrote out the whole of his translation of the Moralia with a single quill, which was later preserved by Lady Harington:.

In 1610 Philemon Holland translated the 1607 edition of William Camden's Britannia into English.

In 1615 Philemon Holland published Thomae Thomasii Dictionarium, a supplement to the Latin dictionary published in 1587 by the Cambridge printer, Thomas Thomas, adding to Thomas's original some 6000 words and meanings culled from the works of both ancient and modern Latin authors.

Philemon Holland translated Xenophon's Cyropaedia, completing a first draft in 1621, and continuing to work on it for the ensuing decade.

When fragments of poetry were cited in the works Philemon Holland translated, he usually versified them into couplets.

Philemon Holland was well regarded in his lifetime, both for the quantity and quality of his translations.