Niebuhr Berthold George

Niebuhr, Berthold George (1776-1831), the celebrated historian of ancient Rome and classical scholar, was born at Copenhagen while his father, a distinguished German engineer, was in the Danish service; but in his second year he was taken to South Ditmarsh, in Germany. After acquiring some knowledge of commerce at Hamburg, and studying law at Kiel, he went, in 1795, to Edinburgh to study natural science for a year and a half, and then, after travelling in England for half a year, he obtained high financial appointments in Copenhagen. In 1806 he entered the Prussian service, and took an active part, under Stein (q.v.), in the re-establishment of Prussian affairs. In 1810 he lectured on Roman history in the new university of Berlin, and in the two succeeding years published the first two volumes of his Roman history. These he recast from 1827 to 1830. The third volume he left unfinished. The most important of his many contributions to classical scholarship are his discovery in Verona of the Institutions of Gains (1816), and his edition of unedited fragments of the works of Cicero and of Livy (1820).