Curtius

Curtius, ERNST, a distinguished German classical archaeologist and historian, born September 2, 1814, at Lübeck. He studied philology at Bonn, Göttingen, and Berlin, visited Athens with Brandis in 1837, and next accompanied his teacher, Ottfried Müller, in his travels through Greece. For some time he taught in two Berlin gymnasiums, next became extraordinary professor at the university there, and (1844-49) tutor to the Crown Prince of Prussia. In 1856 he succeeded Hermann as professor at Göttingen, whence he was recalled in 1868 to become ordinary professor at Berlin. Since 1853 a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, he was in 1871-93 one of its permanent secretaries. His earlier works were Klassische Studien (1840), Anekdota Delphica (1843), Inscriptiones Atticae Duodecim (1843), and Die Akropolis von Athen (1844). The fruits of his repeated visits to Greece and Asia Minor—last in the spring of 1874, to make preparations for the intended excavations at Olympia at the instance of the German government—appear partly in the memoirs of the Göttingen Society of Sciences and of the Berlin Academy, and partly in his books, Naxos (1846), Olympia (1852), Die Ionier (1855), Die Topographie Kleinasiens (1872), and Ephesos (1874). His orations, delivered at Göttingen in the capacity of 'Professor Eloquentiae,' were collected in 1864; those at Berlin, under the title, Altertum und Gegenwart (2 vols. 1875-82). Besides these and numerous papers in the special archaeological and philological journals, Curtius published Peloponnesos (2 vols. 1851-52), a luminous description of that part of Greece, and Griechische Geschichte (3 vols. 1857-61; 6th ed. 1887-89; trans. by A. W. Ward, 1868-76), a work unequalled for its insight into the artistic growth and development of the Greek race. With Kaupert he prepared the Atlas von Athen (1878); earlier, with Adler and Hirschfeld, Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia, the official account of the excavations at Olympia (3 vols. 1877-78). He died 11th July 1896.