Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann

HERMANN, Johann Gottfried Jakob (1772–1848), classical editor and philologist, was born at Leipsic on November 28, 1772. Entering the university of his native city at the precocious age of fourteen, Hermann at first studied law, but his inclination to classical learning was too strong to be resisted, and accordingly, after a session spent at Jena in 1793–94, he became a lecturer on classical literature in Leipsic. In 1798 he was appointed professor extraordinarius of philosophy at the university there, and after refusing an invitation to proceed to Kiel as rector of a school, he was in 1803 chosen professor of eloquence. In 1809 he received the chair of poetry in addition. He died, senior of the university, on December 31, 1848.

Hermann devoted his early attention to the classical poetical metres, and published on that subject De metris Græcorum et Romanorum poetarum, in 1796; Handbuch der Metrik, in 1798; Elementa doctrinæ metricæ, in 1816, of which an Epitome appeared in 1818; and De Metris Pindari in 1817, attached to Heyne’s edition of that author. Of his influential and valuable writings on Greek grammar the chief are De emendenda ratione Græcæ grammaticæ, 1801; Notes and Excursus to Viger’s “De præcipuis Græcæ dictionis idiotismis,” 1802; and De particula ἄν libri IV., 1831. His Lexicon of Photius appeared in 1808. His editions of the classics comprise several of the plays of Euripides (see vol. viii. p. 680); the Clouds of Aristophanes, 1799; Trinummus of Plautus, 1800; Poetics of Aristotle, 1802; Hymns of Orpheus, 1805; and the Homeric Hymns, 1816. In 1825 Hermann finished the edition of Sophocles begun by Erfurdt. His editions of Bion and Moschus were published posthumously in 1849, and of all the plays of Æschylus in 1852. The Opuscula, a collection of Hermann’s smaller writings in Latin, appeared in seven volumes between 1827 and 1877.