JOHANN GOTTLOB

SCHNEIDER (1750-1822)  , German classical scholar and naturalist, was born at Kollmen in Saxony on the 18th of January 1750 . In 1774, on the recommendation of Heyne, he became secretary to the famous Strassburg scholar, R . F . Brunck, and in 1811 professor of ancient languages and eloquence at . Breslau (chief librarian, 1816) where he died on the 12th of January 1822 . Of his numerous works the most important was his Kritisches griechisch-deutsches Handworterbuch (1797-1798), the first independent work of the kind since Stephanus's Thesaurus, and the basis of F . Passow's and all succeeding Greek lexicons . A special improvement was the introduction of words and expressions connected with natural history and science . The scientific writings of ancient authors especially attracted him . He published editions of Aelian, De natura animalium; Nicander, Alexipharmaca and Theriaca; the Scriptores rei rusticae; Aristotle, Historia animalium and Politica; Epicurus, Physica and Meteorologica; Theophrastus, Eclogae physicae; Oppian, Halieutica and Cynegetica; the complete works of Xenophon and Vitruvius; the Argonautica of the so-called Orpheus (for which Ruhnken nicknamed him " Orpheomastix "); an essay on the life and writings of Pindar and a collection of his fragments . His Eclogae physicae is a selection of extracts of various length from Greek and Latin writers on scientific subjects, containing the original text and commentary, with essays on natural history and science in ancient times . See F .

Passow, Opuscula academica (1835); C .

Bursian, Geschichte der classischen Philologie in Deutschland (1883) .