He was born in Charleston, South Carolina to Emma Louisa Lanneau and Benjamin Gildersleeve. His father was a Presbyterianevangelist, and editor of the Charleston Christian Observer from 1826 to 1845, of the Richmond Watchman and Observer from 1845 to 1856, and of The Central Presbyterian from 1856 to 1860. His maternal grandfather was Bazile Lanneau, one of the many French Acadians who were forcibly expelled by the British from present day Nova Scotia during the French and Indian War. His maternal grandmother was Hannah Vinyard. He graduated from Princeton in 1849 at the age of eighteen, and went on to study under Johannes Franz in Berlin, under Friedrich Ritschl at Bonn and under Friedrich Wilhelm Schneidewin at Göttingen, where he received his Ph.D. in 1853. Upon returning to the United States, he was offered a position as a Classics professor at Princeton, but he turned it down. From 1856 to 1876 he was professor of Greek at the University of Virginia, holding the chair of Latin also from 1861 to 1866. He married September 18, 1866 in Middlebury, Virginia to Eliza Fisher Colston. After service for the Confederate States Army in the American Civil War, during which Gildersleeve was shot in the leg, he returned to the University of Virginia. Ten years later, he accepted an offer from Daniel Coit Gilman to teach at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. When the Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876, Gildersleeve was one of five original full professors and was responsible for setting up a program in the study of Greek and Roman literature, at which he succeeded admirably. He chose junior faculty and graduate students who went on to make a major impact in classical studies, at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere. His hiring also helped to reassure the Baltimore community that the new university was not just a northern institution transplanted south. Johns Hopkins was known to be opposed to slavery, founding president Daniel Coit Gilman was from Connecticut, and most other faculty were from the northern states, which led to suspicion regarding the intent of the new institution. In 1880, the American Journal of Philology, a quarterly published by the Johns Hopkins University, was established under his editorial charge, and his strong personality was expressed in the department of the Journal headed "Brief Report" or "Lanx Satura," and in the earliest years of its publication every tiny detail was in his hands. His style in it, as elsewhere, is in striking contrast to that of the typical classical scholar, and accords with his conviction that the true aim of scholarship is "that which is." He published a Latin Grammar and a Latin Series for use in secondary schools, both marked by lucidity of order and mastery of grammatical theory and methods. His edition of Persius is of great value. But his bent was rather toward Greek than Latin. His special interest in Christian Greek was partly the cause of his editing the Apologies of Justin Martyr, which claimed to have "used unblushingly as a repository for syntactical formulae." Gildersleeve's studies under Franz had no doubt quickened his interest in Greek syntax, and his logic, untrammeled by previous categories, and his marvelous sympathy with the language were displayed in this most unlikely of places. His Syntax of Classic Greek collects these formulae. Gildersleeve edited in 1885 The Olympian and Pythian Odes of Pindar, with a brilliant and valuable introduction. His views on the function of grammar were summarized in a paper on The Spiritual Rights of Minute Research delivered at Bryn Mawr on June 16, 1895. His collected contributions to literary periodicals appeared in 1890 under the title Essays and Studies Educational and Literary. in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was elected president of the American Philological Association in 1877 and again in 1908 and became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as of various learned societies. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from William and Mary, Harvard, Yale, Chicago, and Pennsylvania ; D.C.L. from the University of the South ; L.H.D. from Yale and Princeton ; Litt.D. from Oxford and Cambridge. Gildersleeve retired from teaching in 1915. He died on January 9, 1924 and was buried at the University of Virginia cemetery. In a memorial published in the American Journal of Philology, Professor C. W. E. Miller paid tribute to Gildersleeve by stating, “Of Greek authors, there were few with whom he did not have more than a bowing acquaintance.” In more recent years, Gildersleeve has received critical attention for his unapologetic defense of slavery, during and after the Civil War. In Soldier and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and the American Civil War, Ward Briggs published editorials written by Gildersleeve while he served as a staff officer in the Confederate Army and as a professor at the University of Virginia. These editorials feature vitriolic attacks on critics of slavery, with parallels drawn to ancient Greek authors and situations. He expressed his contempt for Confederate President Jefferson Davis, whom he considered inept. Jews also came under attack in his writings, as did those accused of miscegenation.
