PETER FRASER Photograph: B
PETER FRASER Photograph: B. J. Harris, Oxford Peter Marshall Fraser 1918–2007 THE SUBJECT OF THIS MEMOIR was for many decades one of the two pre- eminent British historians of the Hellenistic age, which began with Alexander the Great. Whereas the other, F. W. Walbank (1909–2008),1 concentrated on the main literary source for the period, the Greek histor- ian Polybius, Fraser’s main expertise was epigraphic. They both lived to ripe and productive old ages, and both were Fellows of this Academy for an exceptionally long time, both having been elected aged 42 (Walbank was FBA from 1951 to 2008, Fraser from 1960 to 2007). Peter Fraser was a tough, remarkably good-looking man of middle height, with jet-black hair which turned a distinguished white in his 60s, but never disappeared altogether. When he was 77, a Times Higher Education Supplement profile of theLexicon of Greek Personal Names (for which see below, p. 179) described him as ‘a dashing silver-haired don’. He was attract ive to women even at a fairly advanced age and when slightly stout; in youth far more so. The attraction was not merely physical. He was exceptionally charming and amusing company when not in a foul mood, as he not infrequently was. He had led a far more varied and exciting life than most academics, and had a good range of anecdotes, which he told well. He could be kind and generous, but liked to disguise it with gruffness. He could also be cruel. He was, in fact, a bundle of contradictions, and we shall return to this at the end.
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