CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB

See also:

• CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB HEYNE (1729–1812)

HEYNE (1729–1812)  , German classical scholar and archaeologist, was born on the 25th of September 1729, at Chemnitz in Saxony . His father was a poor weaver, and the expenses of his early education were paid by one of his godfathers . In 1748 he entered the university of Leipzig, where he was frequently in want of the necessaries of life . His distress had almost amounted to despair, when he procured the situation of tutor in the family of a French merchant in Leipzig, which enabled him to continue his studies . After he had completed his university course, he was for many years in very straitened circumstances . An elegy written by him in Latin on the'death of a friend attracted the attention of Count von Bruhl, tie prime minister, who expressed a desire to see the author . Accordingly, in April 1752, Heyne journeyed to Dresden, believing that his fortune was made . He was well received; promised a secretaryship and a good salary, but nothing came of it . Another period of want followed, and it was only by persistent solicitation that Heyne was able to obtain the post of under-clerk in the count's library, with a salary of some-what, less than twenty pounds sterling . He increased his scanty pittance by translation; in addition to some French novels, he rendered into German the.Chaeaeas and Callirrkae of Chariton, the . Greek romance writer . He published his first edition of Tibullus in 1755, and in 1756 his Epictetus .

In the latter

year the Seven Years' War broke out, and Heyne was once more in a state of destitution . In 1757 he was offered a tutorship in the household of Fran von Schonberg, where he met his future wife . In January 1.757 he accompanied his pupil to the university of Wittenberg, from which he was driven in 176o by the Prussian cannon . The bombardment of Dresden (to which city he had meanwhile returned) on the 18th of July 1760, destroyed all his possessions, including an almost finished edition of Lucian, based on a valuable codex of the Dresden Library . In the summer of 1761, although still without any fixed-income, he married, and for some time he found it necessary to devote himself to the duties of land-steward to the Baron von Loben in Lusatia . At the end of 1762, however, he was enabled to return to; Dresden, where he was commissioned by P . D . Lippert to prepare the Latin text of the third volume of his Dactyliolheca (an account ,of a; collection of gems) . On the death of Johann Matthias . Gesner at Gottingen in 1761, the vacant chair was refused first by Ernesti and then by Ruhnken, who persuaded Munchhausen, the Hanoverian minister and principal curator of the university; to bestow it on Heyne' (1763) . His emoluments were gradually augmented, and his growing celebrity, brought him most advantageous offers from other German governments, which he . persistently refused . After a long and useful career, he died on the 14th of July 1812 .

Unlike Gottfried

Hermann, Heyne regarded the study of grammar and language only as the means to an end, not as the chief object of philology . But, although not a critical scholar, he was the first to• attempt a scientific treatment of Greek mythology, and he gave an undoubted impulse to philological studies . Of Heyne's numerous writings, the following may be mentioned . Editions, with copious commentaries, of Tibullus (ed . E . C . Wunderlich, 1817), Virgil (ed . G . P . Wagner, 183o-1841), Pindar (3rd ed. by G . H . Schafer, 1817), Apollodorus, Bibliotheca Greece (1803), Homer, Iliad (1802); Opuscula academica (1785-1812), containing more than a hundred academical dissertations, of which the most valuable are those relating to the colonies of Greece and the antiquities of Etruscan art and history .

His Antiquarische Aufsatze (1778-1779) is a valuable collection of essays connected with the history of

ancient art . His contributions to the Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen are said to have been between 7000 and 8000 in number . See biography by A . H . Heeren (1813) which forms the basis of the interesting essay by Carlyle (Misc . Essays, ii.); H . Sauppe, Gottinger Professoren (1872) C . Bursian in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xii . ; J, . E . Sandys, Hist . Class .

Schol: iii . 36-44 .