Boeckh

An archaeologist, born November 24th, 1785, at Karlsruhe. He entered the University of Halle in 1803, and was influenced by the remarkable prelections of F. A. Wolf (q.v.) to engage in the study of classical philology, of which he became professor at Heidelberg in 1809, leaving that chair to take the professorship of rhetoric and ancient literature at Berlin, where he lectured for some forty years with extraordinary success. His is one of the greatest names in the history of philology as a science, in that he conceived of it as an organically constituted whole; so that his lectures included grammar (formal and historical), exegesis, archaeology proper, and the study of ancient literature, history, politics, religion, and society. In short, he aimed at an intellectual reproduction of antiquity on all its sides, as essential to a fruitful study of the classics. This view, which excited much opposition for a time, gave an undeniable impetus to profound and accurate scholarship. His great works are an edition of Pindar in 2 vols. (1811- 22); his treatise Die Staathaushaltung der Athener, 2 vols. (1817; third ed., by Frankel, 1886)—a monument of subtle analysis, minute research, and vast learning; his Metrologische Untersuchungen über Gewichte, Münzfusse und Masse des Alterthums (1838); his Urkunden über das Seewesen des attischen Staats (1840); the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, of which he began the publication at the cost of the Royal Academy of Berlin, and which has been continued by Franz, Kirchhoff, Curtius, Röhl, and others; editions of the Antigone of Sophocles (1843), and of the fragments ascribed to Philolaüs; besides a collection of lectures, essays, etc., with the title Gesammelte kleine Schriften, 7 vols. (1858-74). He died in Berlin, August 3d, 1867. See Von Leutsch, Phil. Anz. xvi. (1886).