Robert Yelverton Tyrrell FBA (/ˈtɪrəl/ TIRR-əl; 21 January 1844 – 19 September 1914) was an Irish classical scholar who was Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College Dublin.

He was a prominent figure in the "Dublin School" of classical scholarship, responsible for Trinity's advancement in prestige in that subject from the late 1860s, known particularly for his seven-volume edition (largely made with his former student, Louis Claude Purser) of the letters of the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero.

He displayed an early talent for classical studies, particularly the composition of Greek and Latin verse, and entered Trinity College Dublin at the unusually young age of sixteen.

He played a leading role in the establishment of the literary journal Hermathena as well as the college miscellany Kottabos, which collected humorous writings, often in Latin and Greek.

[7] In 1867, alongside two fellow Trinity scholars (Thomas J. Bellingham Brady and Maxwell Cormac Cullinan), Tyrrell published Hesperidum susurri ('Whispers of the Hesperides'), a volume of English verse translated into Latin.

Tyrrell's appointment, along with those of John Pentland Mahaffy in 1864 and Arthur Palmer in 1867, marked the beginning of a period in which the subject expanded greatly in numbers, publications and prestige.

Tyrrell wrote that his intention was to discourage Hogan from editing any further works of the playwright "until he has made himself acquainted with the rudiments of Greek accidence and the structure of an iambic trimeter".

[28] Tyrrell was a lifelong friend and supporter of Richard Claverhouse Jebb,[29] Professor of Greek initially at the University of Glasgow and, from 1889, at Cambridge, and often sided with him in academic debates, particularly against Mahaffy.

[34] The move was not regarded as a good fit with Tyrrell's academic interests – he was a literary scholar rather than a historian – but may have been intended to prevent Bury from leaving Trinity to seek a professorship elsewhere.

[5] Tyrrell suffered from thrombosis of the legs from 1899, which forced him to give up his previous participation in sport (particularly rackets and tennis), affected his physical and mental energy and,[35] in Stanford's words, "ravaged his fine features".

[36] In 1904, he was considered for the position of college provost, though ultimately passed over in favour of Anthony Traill, who was appointed by the Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, in March.

[46] Who's Who listed his chief recreation as "light literature and the drama": he expressed regret, in one of his commentaries on Cicero, that no historical romance had yet been written on the relationship between Catullus and his lover Lesbia.

[48] In 1903, during a period of debate over the "Irish University Question",[h] Tyrrell published a sonnet called "Holy Ireland", in which he denigrated the influence of Catholicism upon the country.

[56] He criticised other classical scholars for what he considered over-reliance upon the discoveries of archaeologists, writing negatively of "Schliemannism" and ironically comparing the Linear B tablets discovered at Knossos by Arthur Evans with the "baleful signs" given to the hero Bellerophon in the Iliad.

[57] Tyrrell's work, along with that of other academics of the "Dublin School", has been praised for its mixture of rigour, common sense and humour, and rated as an important counterweight to the influence of German scholarship in British classical academia.

[13] The publication of Kottabos was credited with helping to shift Trinity's reputation as the "silent sister", a disparaging nickname granted on account of the college's comparatively small record of scholarly work by comparison with the other ancient universities of the British Isles.

[58] Similarly, his 1867 co-publication of Hesperidum susurri – its name referring to the nymphs who lived at the far western edge of the world in Greek mythology – was the first substantial work of translation from English into Latin to come from Dublin: such exercises were considered a hallmark of the most prestigious classical education in the period.

[36] He also taught the archaeologist William Ridgeway, the translator and educationalist W. J. M. Starkie, the classicists J. I. Beare, W. A. Goligher and G. W. Mooney, the papyrologist Josiah Gilbert Smyly, and Ernest Alton, later provost of Trinity.

[15] Other future literary figures, including the poets Arthur Perceval Graves and T. W. Rolleston, the folklorist John Millington Synge and the writer William Kirkpatrick Magee, studied at Trinity during his tenure and may have attended his lectures.

[64] Gogarty also briefly mourns Tyrrell, along with Mahaffy and the Trinity philosopher Robert Macran, in his 1939 poem "Elegy on the Archpoet William Butler Yeats, Lately Dead".