Armand D'Angour (born 23 November 1958) is a British classical scholar and classical musician, Professor of Classics at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford. His research embraces a wide range of areas across ancient Greek culture, and has resulted in publications that contribute to scholarship on ancient Greek music and metre, innovation in ancient Greece, Latin and Greek lyric poetry, the biography of Socrates and the status of Aspasia of Miletus. He writes poetry in ancient Greek and Latin, and was commissioned to compose odes in ancient Greek verse for the 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games.
. . .D'Angour's research into the early life of the philosopher Socrates led him to elicit new evidence for the identification of 'Diotima' in Plato's Symposium as Aspasia of Miletus. His book on the subject, Socrates in Love, published in 2019, was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal in May 2019, with reviewer Jamie James writing:
It is a tour de force of scholarship, and D'Angour sifts through his vast reading with judicious care. Open-minded but not credulous, he accomplishes what was long thought to be impossible: a reliable, consistent account of the man who forged the matrix of Western philosophy [...] D’Angour rehabilitates Aspasia's reputation and ingeniously argues that she originated the concept of Platonic love, one of the first principles of Western philosophy. Moreover, he moots the "attractive and compelling possibility that the advent of Aspasia into the young Socrates' life" may present "an appealing and credible image of Socrates in love"
Video Title: Discovering Socrates in Love: Armand D'Angour. Source: Armand D'Angour. Date Published: December 13, 2019. Description:
Armand D'Angour, author of Socrates in Love (Bloomsbury 2019) discusses with fellow-classicist Penny Murray the revelatory book on the life of the philosopher and his newly-discovered relationship with Aspasia, wife of Pericles.
