He was born in Edinburgh, the grandson of Alexander Monro, tertius (1773-1859), professor of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, whose own father, Alexander Monro, secundus (1733-1817), and grandfather, Alexander Monro, primus (1697-1767), had both filled the same position. David Monro was educated at the University of Glasgow, Brasenose College, Oxford and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1859 he was elected fellow, and in 1882 provost of Oriel, which office he held till his death at Heiden, Switzerland.
He was a polymath, an excellent linguist, and possessed considerable knowledge of music, painting and architecture. His favourite study was Homer, and his Grammar of the Homeric Dialect (2nd ed., 1891) established his reputation as an authority on the subject. He edited the last twelve books of the Odyssey, with valuable appendices on the composition of the poem, its relation to the Iliad and the cyclic poets, the history of the text, the dialects, and the Homeric house; a critical text of the poems and fragments (Homeri opera et reliquiae, 1896); Homeri opera (1902, with TW Allen, in Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca oxoniensis); and an edition of the Iliad with notes for schools.
His article on Homer, written for the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, was revised by him for later versions before he died. Mention may also be made of his Modes of Ancient Greek Music (1894), on which see Classical Review for December 1894, with author's reply in the same for February 1895.
See Memoir by J Cook Wilson (Oxford, 1907).
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.