Boeckh

Boeckh, August, was born in 1785 at Karlsruhe, and educated there and at the university of Halle, studying theology under Schleiermacher, and philology under F. A. Wolf. He was for a short time professor at Heidelberg, but in 1811 received the chair of ancient literature in the new university of Berlin, where he spent the rest of his life. Following Wolf he forced into the service of philology the whole range of classical knowledge, historical, antiquarian, and philosophical. He laboured assiduously in this wide field, and the first result was his fine edition of Pindar with a dissertation on metres which threw a new light on the subject. Next came Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, a minute and critical account of the political economy of Greece, followed by treatises on the naval affairs, money, weights, and measures of Athens. Lastly, he edited for the Berlin Academy of Sciences the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum. In his minor writings there is scarcely a topic connected with Greek life on which he did not touch. He was an authority on chronology, on Platonic doctrine, on ancient astronomy, and on the science of education. He edited and translated the Antigone, and collected the doubtful fragments of Philolaus. He died in 1867.