Johann Georg Baiter was a Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 philologist and textual critic.

Life

He was born at Zürich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, where he received his early education. He went on in 1818 to the University of Tübingen, but could not afford to stay there, and had to return to Zürich, where for several years he was a private tutor. From 1824 to 1829 he studied at Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 under Friedrich Thiersch

Friedrich Thiersch

Friedrich Wilhelm Thiersch , was a German classical scholar and educationist.-Biography:He was born at Kirchscheidungen...

; at Göttingen, under Georg Ludolf Dissen

Georg Ludolf Dissen

Georg Ludolf Dissen was a German classical philologist who was a native of Groß Schneen, a village in the District of Göttingen....

; at Königsberg

University of Königsberg

The University of Königsberg was the university of Königsberg in East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 as second Protestant academy by Duke Albert of Prussia, and was commonly known as the Albertina....

, under Christian Lobeck

Christian Lobeck

Christian August Lobeck , was a German classical scholar.He was born at Naumburg. After studying at the universities of Jena and Leipzig, he became Privatdozent at the University of Wittenberg in 1802, and in 1810 was appointed to a professorship there...

. From 1833 to 1876 he was Oberlehrer at the gymnasium in Zürich, where he died.

Work

Baiter's strong point was textual criticism

Textual criticism

Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...

, applied chiefly to Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

 and the Attic orators; he was very successful in finding the best manuscript authorities, and his collations were made with the greatest accuracy. Most of his works were produced in collaboration with other scholars, such as Johann Caspar von Orelli

Johann Caspar von Orelli

Johann Caspar von Orelli , was a Swiss classical scholar.He was born at Zürich of a distinguished Italian family which had taken refuge in Switzerland at the time of the Protestant Reformation...

, who regarded him as his right-hand man. He edited Isocrates

Isocrates

Isocrates , an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works....

, Panegyricus (1831); with Sauppe

Hermann Sauppe

Hermann Sauppe was a German classical philologist and epigraphist born in Wesenstein, near Dresden....

, Lycurgus

Lycurgus

Lycurgus or Lykurgus may refer to:People:* Historical:** Lycurgus of Sparta, creator of constitution of Sparta** Lycurgus of Athens, one of the ten notable orators at Athens,...

, Leocralca (1834) and Oratores Atticae (1838–1850); with Orelli and Winckelmann

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

Johann Joachim Winckelmann was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art...

, a critical edition of Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

 (1839–1842), which marked a distinct advance in the text, two new manuscripts being laid under contribution; with Orelli, Babrius, Fabellae Iambicae nuper repertae (1845); Isocrates, in the Didot collection of classics (1846).

Collaborators

He had been associated with Orelli in his great work on Cicero, and assisted in Ciceronis Scholiastae (1833) and Onomasticon Tullianum (1836–1838). The Fasti Consulares and Triumphales were all his own work. With Orelli and (after his death) Karl Felix Halm

Karl Felix Halm

Karl Felix Halm , was a German classical scholar and critic.-Life:He was born at Munich. In 1849, having held appointments at Speyer and Hadamar, he became rector of the newly founded Maximiliansgymnasium at Munich, and in 1856 director of the royal library and professor in the University of Munich...

, he assisted in the second edition of the Cicero, and, with Kayser, edited the same author for the Tauchnitz

Tauchnitz

Tauchnitz was the name of a family of German printers and publishers.Karl Christoph Traugott Tauchnitz , born at Grossbardau near Grimma, Saxony, established a printing business in Leipzig in 1796 and a publishing house in 1798...

 series (1860–1869). New editions of Orelli's Tacitus and Horace

Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

were also due to him. It is worth noting that, with Sauppe, he translated Leake's Topography of Athens.