Otto Ribbeck
Encyclopedia
Erfurt
Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
- July 18, 1898, Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
), was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
classical scholar.
He was born at Erfurt in Saxony
Kingdom of Saxony
The Kingdom of Saxony , lasting between 1806 and 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. From 1871 it was part of the German Empire. It became a Free state in the era of Weimar Republic in 1918 after the end of World War...
. Having held professorial appointments at Kiel
University of Kiel
The University of Kiel is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the Academia Holsatorum Chiloniensis by Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and has approximately 23,000 students today...
and Heidelberg, he succeeded his tutor, Friedrich Ritschl, in the chair of classical philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
at Leipzig
University of Leipzig
The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...
, where he died.
Ribbeck was the author of several standard works on the poets and poetry of Rome
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, the most important of which are the following: Geschichte der römischen Dichtung (2nd ed., 1894-1900); Die römische Tragodie im Zeitalter der Republik (1875); Scaenicae Romanorum Poesis Fragmenta, including the tragic and comic fragments (3rd ed., 1897).
As a textual critic he was distinguished by considerable rashness, and never hesitated to alter, rearrange or reject as spurious what failed to reach his standard of excellence. These tendencies are strikingly shown in his editions of the Epistles and Ars Poetica
Ars Poetica
Ars Poetica is a term meaning "The Art of Poetry" or "On the Nature of Poetry". Early examples of Ars Poetica by Aristotle and Horace have survived and have since spawned many other poems that bear the same name...
of 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:...
(1869), the Satires of Juvenal (1859) and in the supplementary essay Der echte und unechte Juvenal (1865). In later years, however, he became much more conservative.
His edition of Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
(2nd ed., 1894-1895), although only critical, is a work of great erudition, especially the Prolegomena. His biography of Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl
Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl
Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl was a German scholar best known as a student of Plautus.-Biography:He was born in Großvargula, Thuringia. His family, in which culture and poverty were hereditary, were Protestants who had migrated several generations earlier from Bohemia...
(1879-1881) is one of the best works of its kind. The influence of his tutor may be seen in Ribbeck's critical edition of the Miles Gioriosus of Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
, and Beitrage zur Lehre von den laleinischen Partikeln, a work of much promise, which causes regret that he did not publish further results of his studies in that direction. His miscellaneous Reden und Vorträge were published after his death (Leipzig, 1899). He took great interest in the monumental Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae is a monumental dictionary of Latin. It encompasses the Latin language from the time of its origin to the time of Isidore of Seville ....
, and it was chiefly owing to his efforts that the government of Saxony was induced to assist its production by a considerable subsidy.
The chief authority for his life is Otto Ribbeck; sein Bild seines Lebens aus seinen Briefen (1901), ed. by Emma Ribbeck.