Christian Gottlob Heyne

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Christian Gottlob Heyne

Christian Gottlob Heyne (September 25, 1729 – July 14, 1812) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
classical scholar and archaeologist as well as long-time director of the Göttingen State and University Library

Göttingen State and University Library

Chemnitz

Chemnitz is a city in eastern Germany. With a population of approximately 245,000 in its city limits, Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the Free State of Saxony....
, Electorate of Saxony

Electorate of Saxony

The Electorate of Saxony or Duchy of Upper Saxony was an independent hereditary Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 1356?1806. It was the successor state of the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg and was itself replaced in Napoleonic times by the Kingdom of Saxony ....
. His father was a poor weaver, and his education was paid for by his godfather.

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Christian Gottlob Heyne (September 25, 1729 – July 14, 1812) was a German

Germany

Göttingen State and University Library

Biography

He was born in Chemnitz

Chemnitz

Chemnitz is a city in eastern Germany. With a population of approximately 245,000 in its city limits, Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the Free State of Saxony....
, Electorate of Saxony

Electorate of Saxony

University of Leipzig

The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest University in Europeand currently the List_of_universities_in_Germany#Universities_by_age university in Germany....
, where he was often short of the necessaries of life. He was in despair by the time he obtained a position as tutor in the family of a French merchant in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig is, with a population of over 511,252, the largest city in the States of Germany of Saxony, Germany....
, which enabled him to continue his studies. After he had completed his university course, he was for many years in very straitened circumstances.

An elegy written by him in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
on the death of a friend attracted the attention of Count von Brühl

Heinrich, count von Brühl

Heinrich, count von Br?hl , Germany statesman at the court of Saxony, was the son of Johann Moritz von Br?hl, a noble who held the office of Oberhofmarschall at the small court of Sachsen-Weissenfels....
, the prime minister, who expressed a desire to see the author. Accordingly, in April 1752, Heyne journeyed to Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Germany Federal Free state of Saxony. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon triangle metropolitan area....
, believing that his fortune was made. He was well received; promised a secretaryship and a good salary, but nothing came of it. Another period of poverty followed, and only by persistent solicitation was Heyne able to obtain the post of under-clerk in the count's library, with a salary of less than twenty pounds sterling. He increased this pittance by translation; in addition to some French novels, he rendered into German The Loves of Chaereas and Callirrhoe of Chariton

Chariton

Chariton of Aphrodisias was the author of an ancient Greek language novel entitled Chaereas and Callirhoe. Recent evidence of fragments of the text on Papyrus suggests that the novel may have been written in the mid 1st century AD, making it the oldest surviving complete ancient Romance and the only one to make use of apparent historio...
, the Greek romance writer. He published his first edition of Tibullus

Tibullus

Albius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegy.Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins....
in 1755, and in 1756 his Epictetus

Epictetus

Epictetus was a Ancient Greece Stoicism philosophy. He was probably born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia , and lived in Rome until his exile to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece, where he lived most of his life and died....
. In the latter year the Seven Years' War

Seven Years' War

The Seven Years' War lasted between 1756?1763 and involved all of the major European powers of the period. The war pitted Kingdom of Prussia and Kingdom of Great Britain and a coalition of smaller German states against an alliance consisting of Archduchy of Austria, Early Modern France, Russian Empire, Kingdom of Sweden, and Electorate of Sa...
broke out, and Heyne was once more in a state of destitution. In 1757 he was offered a tutorship in the household of Frau von Schönberg, where he met his future wife.

In January 1758 he accompanied his pupil to the University of Wittenberg, but the Prussian invasion drove him out in 1760. The bombardment of Dresden, on July 18, 1760, destroyed all his possessions, including an almost finished edition of Lucian

Lucian

Lucian of Samosata was an Assyrian people rhetorician, and satire who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature....
, based on a valuable codex of the Dresden Library. In the summer of 1761, still without any fixed income, he married, and became land-steward to the Baron von Löben in Lusatia. At the end of 1762, however, he was able to return to Dresden, where he was commissioned by P. D. Lippert to prepare the Latin text of the third volume of his Dactyliotheca (art account of a collection of gems).

Odysseus and Euryclea By Christian Gottlob Heyne Project Gutenberg Etext 13725

On the death of Johann Matthias Gesner

Johann Matthias Gesner

Johann Matthias Gesner , was a Germany classical scholar and schoolmaster.He was born at Roth an der Rednitz near Ansbach. He studied at the University of Jena, and in 1714 published a work on the Philopatiis ascribed to Lucian....
at the University of Göttingen in 1761, the vacant chair was refused first by Ernesti and then by Ruhnken

David Ruhnken

David Ruhnken was a scholar, one of the most illustrious in the history of the Netherlands....
, who persuaded Münchhausen, the Hanoverian minister and principal curator of the university to bestow it on Heyne (1763). His emoluments were gradually augmented, and his growing celebrity brought him most advantageous offers from other German governments, which he persistently refused. Heyne was simultaneously given the post of director of the university library, a position he held until his death in 1812. Under his directorship, the library, today known as the Göttingen State and University Library

Göttingen State and University Library

The G?ttingen State and University Library is the library for G?ttingen University as well as the central library for the German State of Lower Saxony , and the library for the G?ttingen Academy of Sciences....
, grew in size and reputation to be one of the leading academic libraries of the world, due to Heyne's innovative cataloging methods and aggressive international acquisitions policy.

Unlike Gottfried Hermann

Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann

Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann was a Germany classical scholar and philologist. He was born at Leipzig.Entering the university of Leipzig at the age of fourteen, Hermann at first studied law, which he soon abandoned for the classics....
, Heyne regarded the study of grammar

Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
and language only as the means to an end, not as the chief object of philology. But, although not a critical scholar, he was the first to attempt a scientific treatment of Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, and he gave an undoubted impulse to philological

Philology

Philology, derived from the Greek language considers both morphology and Meaning in linguistic expression, combining linguistics and literary studies....
studies.

Of Heyne's numerous writings, the following may be mentioned. Editions, with copious commentaries

Commentary (philology)

In philology, a commentary is a line-by-line or even word-by-word explication usually attached to an edition of a text in the same or an accompanying volume....
, of Tibullus (ed. SC Wunderlich, 1817), Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works?the Bucolics , the Georgics and the Aeneid?although several Appendix Vergiliana are also attributed to him....
(ed. GP Wagner, 1830-1841), Pindar

Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet.Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is by far the best preserved, and critics in antiquity tended to regard him as the greatest....
(3rd ed. by GH Schafer, 1817), Apollodorus

Apollodorus

Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greeks scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace....
, Bibliotheca Graeca (1803), Homer, Iliad (1802); Opuscula academica (1785-1812), containing more than a hundred academical dissertations, of which the most valuable are those relating to the colonies of Greece and the antiquities of Etruscan art and history. His Antiquarische Aufsätze (1778-1779) is a valuable collection of essays connected with the history of ancient art. His contributions to the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen are said to have been between 7000 and 8000 in number. See biography by Heeren

Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren

Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren was a Germany historian.He was born at Arbergen, near Bremen . He studied philosophy, theology and history at the University of G?ttingen, and then travelled in France, Italy and the Netherlands....
(1813) which forms the basis of the interesting essay by Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle was a Scotland satire writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics the "dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator....
(Misc. Essays, ii.); Heinrich Sauppe, Göttinger Professoren (1872); Conrad Bursian

Conrad Bursian

Conrad Bursian , was a Germany philology and archaeologist.He was born at Mutzschen in Kingdom of Saxony. When his parents moved to Leipzig, he received his early education at Thomasschule zu Leipzig, and entered the university in 1847....
in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie
Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie is one of the most important and most comprehensive biographical reference works in the German language.It was published by the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences between 1875 and 1912 in 56 volumes, printed in Leipzig by Duncker & Humblot....
, xii.; JE Sandys

John Edwin Sandys

Sir John Edwin Sandys FBA , was a classical scholar.He was born at Leicester on 19 May 1844, a son of the Reverend Timothy Sandys of the Church Missionary Society and Rebecca ....
, Hist. Class. Schol; iii. 36-44.