Bähr, Johann Christian
Felix
, a classical scholar of distinction, was born at Darmstadt in 1798. He was educated at the
University of Heidelberg, and won so much reputation as a classicist that at the early age of
twenty-five he became Professor Ordinarius of Classical Philology in that ancient seat of
learning
(1823). He died November 27th, 1872. His greatest work is his
Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, which first appeared in 1828,
and reached its fourth edition in 1870. In it the subject is presented with a lucidity, taste,
and accuracy that are rarely found combined in so unusual a degree. To this history he added
three supplements, dealing respectively with the Christian poets and historians
(1836), the Christian theology of the Latin Fathers
(1837), and the
later Roman literature of the Carlovingian period
(1840). He also published an
excellent edition of Herodotus, of which the second edition appeared in 1861.
