Dudley Loftus

He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin when 18, then entered Oxford University in 1639 on the advice of Bishop Usher, taking his Master of Arts degree in 1641.

In his lifetime he was acclaimed as a linguist, and his reputation as an orientalist was unrivalled thanks to his Latin translations from Ethiopic, Armenian, Syriac, Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian texts.

He served four times as a Member of the Irish House of Commons, representing Naas between 1642 and 1648, the combined counties of Kildare and Wicklow in the Third Protectorate Parliament of 1659 at Westminster, Bannow between 1661 and 1666 and Fethard between 1692 and 1693.

No Tartar is more fair, no Athenian better hung, / Sol varnish’d o’er his face, and Mercury his tongue.

For his height let us salute him as Ajax, for his scrawniness as Tithonus, for his shaking head as the palsied Priam, for his swiftness as Achilles and finally (for his giant shanks), as the Colossus."