Watching television in New York, Marston Gibson, a Bajan judicial officer on Long Island, became elated when he heard Dr Dexter Hoyos, a fellow Oxford University graduate, discussing with great authority the intricate exploits of Hannibal.“Dr Hoyos is considered a world-famous scholar in the classics and I felt extremely proud to know that a Barbadian had become such an internationally recognised expert on Roman history to have been invited by History International, the global cable television channel, to discuss how Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general who defeated the powerful Roman army at the Battle of Cannae,” said Gibson, a Rhodes Scholar. Actually, Hannibal, perhaps the greatest general and statesman of Carthage, an ancient North African City, was the subject of several books and scholarly papers written by Prof. Hoyos and published around the world. Hannibal earned his place in immortality, not simply for first defeating the Romans by his superior military tactics and daring manoeuvres but for leading his Carthaginian army of about 30 000 men, horses and elephants over the Alps.“Hannibal was a very interesting historical figure because he impressed his enemies as well as his own people,” said Hoyos. “All we know about Hannibal in reality comes from the people he fought against, the Greeks and the Romans because the Carthaginians’ own records were lost when the City was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC. He led a great power, a very multi-cultural power in North Africa founded by Tunisians who lived close to what is now the Lebanese coast.”Life in AustraliaHoyos, a 1963 Barbados scholar who went on to the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and earned a first class honours degree in classics, Latin and Greek in 1966; a Master’s in Latin with Greek from Canada’s McMaster University in Ontario Canada in 1967; and a Doctorate in ancient history four years later from Oxford University in Britain. He has spent the past 38 years teaching, writing, lecturing publishing and raising a family in Australia after he was recruited in 1972 by Sydney University to teach Latin and Roman history.“Although I have since retired I am still associated with the university, of course,” he said in an interview from his home in Sydney, a few days after he had returned home from visits to North Carolina, New York and Barbados. “The University offered me a position when I applied and I simply stayed there, taught happily for 36 years.
I managed to do that quite steadily and all the way through. It was really a good combination, since Roman History is my first interest and Latin is my second. The two things fitted together very well and helped with my research.”But teaching and conducting research in Roman history, Latin and related subjects are not the only hallmarks of his career.The soft-spoken and affable scholar who attended Harrison College until 1963, has written several books and scholarly papers. Some of these were on Latin.“I am trying to spread the word about Latin and how people can read it just like any other language,” he explained.
“What many people don’t recognise is that Latin is spoken in an evolved form. You can find it in French, Spanish, German and English. It has an enormous influence on different languages. Roman law has played a tremendous role in the evolution of English common law.”His interest in the classics was traced to the books he started to read in the library of his uncle, Sir Alexander Hoyos, the late revered historian at The Lodge School.
