A. S. F. Gow

Andrew Sydenham Farrar Gow (27 August 1886 – 2 February 1978) was an English classical scholar and teacher. Apart from eleven years as a master at Eton College between 1914 and 1925 his career was entirely at Trinity College, Cambridge.

At Trinity, Gow was a colleague and friend of A. E. Housman, on whose works he became an authority. The two men shared a sharp-tongued scholarly intolerance of anything they saw as slipshod, pretentious or badly thought-through, but Gow nonetheless won the affection of many of his students. He was Housman's literary executor, and published a book about his friend shortly after Housman's death.

Gow's principal subject as a scholar was the Greek bucolic poet Theocritus, his works on whom remain a core source for modern students of the poet.

Gow was born in Gower Street, London, the eldest of the three children, all of whom were boys, of Dr (later the Rev) James Gow (1854–1923) and his wife Gertrude Sydenham, née Everett-Green. James Gow, formerly a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was headmaster of Nottingham High School from 1885 to 1901, and of Westminster School from 1901 to 1919. Gow was christened Andrew after an uncle who was Keeper of the Royal Academy, and, according to a biographical sketch in The Times, it may well have been from the uncle and his circle of friends, which included Poynter and Alma-Tadema, that Gow derived his interest in paintings.

Gow was educated at Nottingham High School and then at Rugby School, after which, in 1905, he won a classical scholarship to Trinity, Cambridge. In the following five years he twice won the Porson Prize for Greek verse composition, the Browne medal for Latin and Greek poetry, and the Charles Oldham Classical Scholarship. Together with Rupert Brooke and others he helped to found the Marlowe Society. He took a first class in both parts of the tripos, gaining a distinction in classical archaeology.

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