WILLIAM HAILEY WILLIS

WILLIAM H. WILLIS, Editor Emeritus of GRBS, died on 13 July
2000 at the age of 84. In 1960, at the end of its second year,
GRBS was foundering and in danger of ceasing publication
altogether. Convinced of the value and place of a journal of
Greek studies in America, Sterling Dow, with the support of the
other members of the Advisory Board, recruited William Willis,
then Chair of Classics at the University of Mississippi, to take
up the editorship. At this he labored selflessly for twenty years.
He not only edited each article from submission to printing, but
also supervised every aspect of publication from font selection
to printers’ bills to subscriber invoicing; he did the same for the
eight volumes of Monographs published across those years. He
set the journal on its feet and gave it the clarity and rigor that
characterized all his work. After the turmoil at Mississippi,
during which he strove to build support for the integration of
the university, he took up Duke’s invitation to its professorship
of Greek in 1963, and brought the journal to Durham.

His scrupulous attention to detail, his broad intellectual
interests, and his generosity in fostering scholars set the model
that his successors on the Editorial and Advisory Boards have
attempted to follow. His counsel, learning, and good humor will
be missed.

A volume in his honor appeared on the occasion of his retirement
from Duke University, Classical Studies Presented to William
Hailey Willis (= BASP 22 [1985]). To the bibliography can be added:
“The Encounter of Alexander with the Brahmans: New Fragments of

the Cynic Diatribe P.Genev.inv. 271,” ZPE 74 (1988) 59–83 (with
Klaus Maresch)

“Oxyrhynchite Documents among the Robinson Papyri,” BASP 25
(1988) 99–127

“A New Fragment of the Bodmer Aspis,” Recherches et rencontres  2
(1990) 167–171

“The Letter of Peter (1 Peter): Coptic text, translation, notes and
variant readings,” in J. E. Goehring et al.,  The Crosby-Schøyen
Codex (= CSCO 521, Subsidia 85 [Louvain 1990]) 135–215

“The Robinson-Cologne Papyrus of Achilles Tatius,” GRBS 31 (1990)
73–102

“Comoedia Dukiana,” GRBS 32 (1991) 331–353
The Archive of Ammon Scholasticus of Panopolis: The Legacy of Har-

pocration (=Pap.Colon. 26.1 [Opladen 1997]; with Klaus Maresch)
The Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri, most recently Packard

Humanities Institute CD 7 (1997)
Successive electronic versions of the Checklist of Editions of Greek

Papyri and Ostraca  (with John F. Oates et al.), most recently
http://odyssey.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist.html