Müller, KARL OTFRIED

Müller, KARL OTFRIED, classical archaeologist, was born 28th August 1797, at Brieg, in Silesia, studied at Breslau and Berlin, and in 1819 was appointed professor of Archeology and director of the Philological Seminary at Göttingen. He died at Athens, 1st August 1840, whilst on a tour through Italy and Greece. His great design was to embrace the whole life of ancient Greece, its art, politics, industry, religion, in one warm and vivid conception—in a word, to cover the skeletons of antiquity with flesh, and to make the dry bones live. Thus his activity ranged over the whole field of Greek antiquity. We are indebted to him for many new and striking elucidations of the geography and topography, literature, grammar, mythology, manners and customs of the ancients. His work on the Dorians (Die Dorier; Eng. trans. 1839) forms the 2d vol. of his Geschichte Hellenischer Stämme und Städte (new and improved ed. 1844), his principal production; the first vol. deals with Orchomenos and the Minyans. The treatises on the ancient Macedonians (1825) and on the Etruscans (2 vols. 1828; new ed. 1877-78) continue the same line of investigations. Other valuable works from his pen are Ancient Art (1830; new ed. 1878; Eng. trans. 1847); System of Mythology (1825; Eng. trans. 1844); and History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (1846), undertaken at the request of the British 'Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,' translated into English by Sir George Cornwall Lewis and Dr Donaldson, the latter of whom continued the work down to the taking of Constantinople. The German original was published by Müller's brother (2 vols. 1841; new ed. 1882-84). Müller issued useful critical editions of Varro, De Linguâ Latinâ (1833); Festus, De Significatione Verborum (1839); and Æschylus, Eumenides (1833-35). See Memoirs by Lücke (1841) and F. Ranke (1870).