Bekker

A distinguished German philologist, who was born at Berlin in 1785. He took his degree at the University of Halle in 1807, being regarded as the most brilliant pupil of F. Wolf (q.v.). In 1811 he became Professor of Classical Philology at Berlin, where he died in 1871. Bekker's life-work lay in the line of manuscript recension, for which a long course of careful study in the libraries of France, Germany, England, and Italy well fitted him, and which he carried on independently of the printed editions. He did much valuable work upon the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum; and published Anecdota Graeca, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1814-21); besides important recensions of the texts of Plato, Aristotle, the Attic orators, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Theognis, Sextus Empiricus, Livy , and Tacitus.