CHRISTIAN

See also:

• DANIEL
• DANIEL (DANIL)
• DANIEL, BOOK
• DANIEL, GABRIEL (1649-1728)

DANIEL

See also:

• BECK (or BEEK), DAVID (1621—1656)
• CHRISTIAN DANIEL BECK (1757-1832)
• BECK, JAKOB SIGISMUND (1761-1840)

BECK (1757-1832)  , German philologist, historian, theologian and antiquarian, one of the most learned men of his time, was born at Leipzig on the 22nd of January 1757 . He studied at Leipzig University, where he was appointed (1785) professor of Greek and Latin literature . This post he resigned in 1819 in order to take up the professorship of history, but resumed it in 1825 . He also had the management of the university library, was director of the institute for the deaf and dumb, and filled many educational and municipal offices . In 1784 he founded a philological society, which grew into a philological seminary, superintended by him until his death . In 1808 he was made a Hofrath by the king of Saxony, and in 182o a knight of the civil order of merit . His philological lectures, in which grammar and criticism were subordinated to history, were largely attended by hearers from all parts of Germany . He died at Leipzig on the 13th of December 1832 . He edited a number of classical authors: Pedo Albinovanus (1783), Pindar and the Scholia (1792–1795), Aristophanes (with others, 1794, &c.), British protector-ate . Euripides (1778—1788), Apollonius Rhodius (1797), Demosthenes De pace (1799), Plato (1813—1819), Cicero (1795—1807), Titus Calpurnius Siculus (1803) . He translated Ferguson's Fall of the Roman Republic and Goldsmith's History of Greece, and added two volumes to Bauer's Thucydides . He also wrote on theological and historical subjects, and edited philological and bibliographical journals .

He possessed a large and valuable library of 24,000 volumes . See Nobbe, Vita C . D . Beckii (1837); and G .

Hermann, Opuscula, V . 312 .