Karl Lehrs
# Karl Lehrs

Karl Ludwig Lehrs (January 14, 1802 – June 9, 1878), was a German classical scholar.

Born at Königsberg, he was Jewish, but in 1822 he converted to Christianity. In 1845 he was appointed professor of ancient Greek philology at Königsberg University, a post he held until his death.

## Work

His most important works are:

* De Aristarchi Studiis Homericis (1833), which laid a new foundation for Homeric exegesis (on the Aristarchean lines of explaining Homer from the text itself) and textual criticism.
* Quaestiones Epicae (1837).
* De Asclepiade Myrleano (1845).
* Herodiani Scripta Tria emendatiora. Accedunt Analecta (1848).
* Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Altertum (1856, Second much enlarged edition, 1875), his best known work.
* Horatius Flaccus (1869), in which, on aesthetic grounds, he rejected many of the odes as spurious.
* Die Pindarscholien (1873).

Lehrs was a man of decided opinions; his enthusiasm for everything Greek caused him to insist on the undivided authorship of the Iliad; comparative mythology and the symbolical interpretation of myths he regarded as a species of sacrilege.

