Karl Lehrs

Karl Ludwig Lehrs (January 14, 1802 – June 9, 1878), was a German classical scholar.

Biography

Born at Königsberg, he was Jewish, but in 1822 he converted to Christianity. In 1845 he was appointed professor of ancient Greek philology at Königsberg University, a post he held until his death.

He coined the term quattuor grammatici to indicate a class of the A-scholia to Homer's Iliad, which was translated into German as Viermännerkommentar by Arthur Ludwich.

Work

His most important works are:

• De Aristarchi Studiis Homericis (1833), which laid a new foundation for Homeric exegesis (on the Aristarchean lines of explaining Homer from the text itself) and textual criticism.
• Quaestiones Epicae (1837).
• De Asclepiade Myrleano (1845).
• Herodiani Scripta Tria emendatiora. Accedunt Analecta (1848).
• Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Altertum (1856, Second much enlarged edition, 1875), his best known work.
• Horatius Flaccus (1869), in which, on aesthetic grounds, he rejected many of the odes as spurious.
• Die Pindarscholien (1873).

Lehrs was a man of decided opinions; his enthusiasm for everything Greek caused him to insist on the undivided authorship of the Iliad; comparative mythology and the symbolical interpretation of myths he regarded as a species of sacrilege.

Notes

References