Friedrich W. Solmsen (February 4, 1904 – January 30, 1989) was a German-American
philologist and professor of
classical studies. He published nearly 150 books,
monographs,
scholarlyarticles, and
reviews from the 1930s through the 1980s.[1] Solmsen's work is characterized by a prevailing interest in the
history of ideas.[2] He was an influential scholar in the areas of Greek tragedy, particularly for his work on
Aeschylus, and the philosophy of the
physical world and its relation to the soul, especially the systems of
Plato and
Aristotle.
Life and career
Friedrich Solmsen, sometimes called "Fritz" by friends and intimates, was born and educated in Germany. He was among the "Graeca" of
Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, the Graeca being a group of "young scholars"[3] who met in his home during his last decade of life to read a Greek author with a view toward emending the text. In an essay fifty years later, Solmsen recalled those years and the legendary philologist in a biographical sketch that combines politico-historical perspective, sociology of
academia, and personal, sometimes wry observations. "I do not recall Wilamowitz ever
laughing aloud," he mused in a
footnoted aside. "Nor did he ever grin."[4] Solmsen was also a student of
Eduard Norden,
Otto Regenbogen, and
Werner Jaeger, to the three of whom along with Wilamowitz he dedicated the first volume of his collected papers.[5] He was one of the last people to whom the terminally ill Wilamowitz addressed correspondence.[6]
Solmsen's
dissertation on
Aristotelian logic and
rhetoric was published in 1928. He left Germany to escape
Nazism in the mid-1930s,[7] and after a time in England came to the United States, where he taught at
Olivet College (1937–1940) in
Michigan. He then moved to
Cornell University, where he served a term as chair of the classics
department.[8] He taught at Cornell for twenty-two years. Among his courses was "Foundations of Western Thought," which explored the history of philosophical, scientific and religious ideas from
early Greece through the
Hellenistic and
Roman periods.[2]
The Institute for Research in the
Humanities at the University of Wisconsin offers four one-year
fellowships in his name for
postdoctoral work on literary and historical studies of the
Classical,
Medieval, and
Renaissance periods to 1700. The fellowship fund was established by a
bequest from Friedrich and Lieselotte Solmsen.[14]
Works
In his essay on Wilamowitz, Solmsen reflected on classical studies as a
discipline and an intellectual pursuit within a broadly historical context. "The post-
World-War-I generation for whom the value of the Classics had become a problem," he writes, "did not find [from Wilamowitz] an answer to their question what made ancient civilization particularly significant and worth intensive study," adding that Wilamowitz "did not realize the need of justifying their study to a generation for whom the continuity of a tradition that reached back to the age of
Goethe was weakened (though not completely broken) and whose outlook was still in the process of formation; many in fact were consciously striving for a new orientation."[15]
The following
bibliography, arranged by
topic and then
chronologically within the topic, attempts to represent the range of Solmsen's contributions to scholarship but is by no means exhaustive. Omitted are most articles in German, reviews,[16] and notes (i.e., articles of less than three pages). The articles are for the most part collected in his Kleine Schriften, 3 vols. (Hildesheim 1968–1982).
"The Gift of Speech in Homer and Hesiod." Transactions of the American Philological Association 85 (1954) 1–15.
"Zur Theologie im grossen
Aphrodite-Hymnus." Hermes 88 (1960) 1–13.
"Hesiodic Motifs in Plato." In Hésiode et son influence: six exposées et discussions, edited by Kurt von Fritz (Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1962) 171–211.
"The Days of the Works and Days." Transactions of the American Philological Association 94 (1963) 293–320.
Hesiodi Theogonia, Opera et Dies, Scutum (with selected fragments edited by R. Merkelbach and
M.L. West). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. Second edition with a new appendix of fragments, 1983. Third edition, 1990.
Oxford Classical Text edition of the Greek text of
Hesiod's Theogony, Works and Days, and Shield (usually in translation as the Shield of Heracles).
Electra and
Orestes: Three Recognitions in Greek Tragedy. Berlin 1967.[17]
"'Bad Shame' and Related Problems in
Phaedra's Speech (Eur. Hipp. 380–388)." Hermes 101 (1973) 420–425. On a passage from the Hippolytus of Euripides.
"Φρήν, καρδία, ψυχή in Greek tragedy." In Greek Poetry and Philosophy: Studies in Honour of Leonard Woodbury. Edited by Douglas E. Gerber. Scholars Press, 1984, pp. 265–274.
"Ἀλλ᾽ εἰδέναι χρὴ δρῶσαν: The Meaning of
Sophocles' Trachiniai 588-93." American Journal of Philology 106 (1985) 490–496.
Plato
"The Background of
Plato's Theology." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 67 (1936) 208–218. On Book 10 of Plato's Laws.
"Plato and the Unity of Science." Philosophical Review 49 (1940) 566–571.
Plato's Theology. Cornell University Press, 1942. Reviewed at length by William C. Greene in Classical Philology 40 (1945) 128–133.
"On Plato's Account of Respiration." Studi italiani di filologia classica 27–28 (1956) 544–548.
"Platonic Influences in the Formation of Aristotle's Physical System." In Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century. Papers of the Symposium Aristotelicum Held at Oxford in August 1957. Edited by Ingemar During and G.E.L. Owen. Göteborg 1960, pp. 213–235.
"Republic III,389b2–d6: Plato's Draft and the Editor's Mistake." Philologus 109 (1965) 182–185.
Review of Preface to Plato by
Eric A. Havelock (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963). In American Journal of Philology 87 (1966) 99–105.
"Plato's
First Mover in the Eighth Book of Aristotle's Physics." Philomathes: Studies and Essays in the Humanities in Memory of Philip Merlan. Edited by Robert B. Palmer and Robert Hamerton-Kelly. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971, pp. 171–182.
"Plato and Science." In Interpretations of Plato: A Swarthmore Symposium. Edited by Helen F. North. E. J. Brill, 1977.
"Platonic Values in Aristotle's Science." Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978) 3–23.
"Some Passages in Plato's Laws IV and V." Illinois Classical Studies 5 (1980) 44–48.
"The Academic and the Alexandrian editions of Plato's Works." Illinois Classical Studies 6 (1981) 102–111.
"Plato and the Concept of the Soul (Psyche): Some Historical Perspectives." Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (1983) 355–367.
Aristotle
Die aristotelische Methodenlehre und die spätplatonische Akademie, dissertation. Berlin 1928. Revised and published as Die Entwicklung der
aristotelischen Logik und
Rhetorik in 1975 and again in
2001.
"The Origins and Methods of Aristotle's Poetics." Classical Quarterly 29 (1935) 192–201.
"The Aristotelian Tradition in Ancient Rhetoric." American Journal of Philology 62 (1941) 35–50 and 169–190.
"
Boethius and the History of the
Organon." American Journal of Philology 65 (1944) 69–74.
"
Aristotle's
Syllogism and Its Platonic Background." Philosophical Review 60 (1951) 563–571.
"Misplaced Passages at the End of Aristotle's Physics." American Journal of Philology 82 (1961) 270–282.
"
Leisure and
Play in Aristotle's Ideal
state." Rheinisches Museum 107 (1964) 193–220.
Review of Aristotle and the Problem of
Value by Whitney J. Oates (Princeton University Press, 1963). In Journal of Philosophy 62 (1965) 298–303.
Ursprünge und Methoden der aristotelischen Poetik. Darmstadt 1968.
"
Dialectic without the Forms." In Aristotle on Dialectic: The Topics. Proceedings of the Third Symposium Aristotelicum. Edited by G. E. L. Owen. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, pp. 49–68.
"The Fishes of
Lesbos and Their Alleged Significance for the Development of Aristotle." Hermes 106 (1978) 467–484.
"Citations in Their Bearing on the Origin of 'Aristotle' Meteorologica IV." Hermes 113 (1985) 448–459.
Empedocles, Epicurus, Lucretius
Review of T.
Lucreti Cari, De rerum natura, Libri sex, edition and
commentary by William Ellery Leonard and Stanley Barney Smith (University of Wisconsin Press, 1942), in Philosophical Review 53 (1944) 208–211.
"
Epicurus and
Cosmological Heresies." American Journal of Philology 72 (1951) 1–23.
"Epicurus on the Growth and Decline of the
Cosmos." American Journal of Philology 74 (1953) 34–51.
Αἴσθησις in Aristotelian and Epicurean Thought. Amsterdam, 1961. Aisthesis originally meant both cognitive perceptions and feelings (as of pleasure and pain); Solmsen traces the restriction of the term by Plato to cognitive perceptions and so in Aristotle and the
Stoics; Epicurus, however, uses the word to mean the capacity of feeling pleasure and pain as conveyed by the "soul atoms" generally to the body.[19]
"Ζωρός in Empedocles." Classical Review 17 (1967) 245–246.
"A Peculiar Omission in
Lucretius' Account of Human Civilization." Philologus 114 (1970) 256–261.
"Eternal and Temporary Beings in Empedocles' Physical Poem." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 57 (1975) 123–145.
"Epicurus on Void, Matter and Genesis: Some Historical Observations." Phronesis 22 (1977) 263–281.
"Empedocles' Hymn to
Apollo." Phronesis 35 (1980) 219–227.
"Abdera's Arguments for the
Atomic Theory." Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 29 (1988) 59–73.
"Lucretius' Strategy in De rerum natura I." Rheinisches Museum 131 (1988) 315–323.
Philosophical and literary topics
"
Cicero's First Speeches: A Rhetorical Analysis." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 69 (1938) 542–556.
"Some Works of
Philostratus the Elder." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 71 (1940) 556–572.
"
Eratosthenes as Platonist and Poet." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 73 (1942) 192–213.
"Chaos and
Apeiron." Studi italiani di filologia classica 24 (1949) 235–248.
Review of Empedocles' Mixture, Eudoxan Astronomy and Aristotle's Connate
Pneuma by Harald A. T. Reiche (Amsterdam 1960), in American Journal of Philology 84 (1963) 91–94.
"
Thucydides' Treatment of Words and Concepts." Hermes 99 (1971) 385–408.
"The Tradition about
Zeno of Elea Re-examined." Phronesis 16 (1971) 116–141.
"
Parmenides and the Description of Perfect Beauty in
Plato's Symposium." American Journal of Philology 92 (1971) 62–70.
Intellectual Experiments of the Greek
Enlightenment. Princeton University Press, 1975. Six chapters dealing with such topics as argumentation, persuasion, utopianism and reform, language experiments, and empirical psychology.[20]
"Light from Aristotle's Physics on the text of Parmenides B 8 D-K." Phronesis 1977 XXII : 10–12.
"
Theophrastus and Political Aspects of the Belief in Providence." Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 19 (1978) 91–98.
"Emendations in Cosmological Texts." Rheinisches Museum 124 (1981) 1–18.
"
Plotinus v,5,3,21 ff.: A Passage on
Zeus." Museum Helveticum 43 (1986) 68–73.
Augustan poetry
"
Horace's First Roman
Ode." American Journal of Philology 68 (1947) 337–352.
"
Propertius in his Literary Relations with
Tibullus and
Vergil." Philologus 105 (1961) 273–289.
"Three Elegies of Propertius' First Book." Classical Philology 57 (1962) 73–88.
"Tibullus as an
Augustan poet." Hermes 90 (1962) 295–325.
"On Propertius I, 7." American Journal of Philology 86 (1965) 77–84.
"
Catullus' Artistry in C. 68: A Pre-Augustan Subjective Love-Elegy." Monumentum Chiloniense: Studien zur augusteischen Zeit. Kieler Festschrift für Erich Burck zum 70. Geburtstag. Edited by Eckard Lefèvre. Amsterdam 1975, pp. 260–276.
Afterlife, religion, myth
Review of The Greeks and the Irrational by
E.R. Dodds, in American Journal of Philology 75 (1954) 190–196.
Review of Αἰών da
Omero ad Aristotele by Enzo Degani (University of Padua, 1961). In American Journal of Philology 84 (1963) 329–332.
"Greek Ideas of the
Hereafter in
Vergil's Roman Epic." "Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society" 92 (1968) 8–14.
"Ἀμοιβή in the Recently Discovered '
Orphic'
Katabasis." Hermes 96 (1968) 631–632.
"The World of the Dead in Book 6 of the Aeneid." Classical Philology 67 (1972) 31–41.
"Symphytos
Aion (A., Ag. 106)." American Journal of Philology 100 (1979) 477–479. On Aeschylus, Agamemnon, line 106.
Isis among the Greeks and Romans. Harvard University Press, 1979. "It was a surprise, but also a pleasure," noted
J. Gwyn Griffiths, "to find Friedrich Solmsen concerning himself with the impact of Isis on the Graeco-Roman world."[21]
"Achilles on the
Islands of the Blessed: Pindar vs. Homer and Hesiod." American Journal of Philology 103 (1982) 19–24.
"'
Aeneas Founded Rome with
Odysseus.'" Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 90 (1986) 93–110.
Christian topics
"The Powers of Darkness in
Prudentius' Contra
Symmachum: A Study of His Poetic Imagination." Vigiliae Christianae 19 (1965) 237–257.
"The Conclusion of
Theodosius' Oration in Prudentius' Contra Symmachum." Philologus 109 (1965) 310–313.
"
George A. Wells on Christmas in Early
New Testament Criticism." Journal of the History of Ideas 31 (1970) 277–280.
"Early Christian Interest in the Theory of Demonstration." In Romanitas et Christianitas; studia
Iano Henrico Waszink. Edited by W. den Boer. Amsterdam 1973, pp. 281–291.
Ward, Leo R. My Fifty Years at Notre Dame,
chapter 6.
References
^Estimated on the basis of an author search of L'Année philologiqueonlineArchived August 9, 2008, at the
Wayback Machine, which would include his publications from 1949 to his death (retrieved August 2, 2008), and of
JSTOR, which is limited to participating academic journals but includes publications of the 1930s and 1940s (retrieved August 9, 2008).
^
abG.M. Kirkwood, "Foreword to the Paperback Edition," in Friedrich Solmsen, Hesiod and Aeschylus (Cornell University Press, 1995), p. ix.
^William A. Calder III, "Seventeen Letters of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff to Eduard Fraenkel," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 81 (1977), p. 294, note 119.
^Leo R. Ward, My Fifty Years at Notre Dame,
chapter 6.
^"Friedrich Solmsen, Professor, 84," New York Times (February 10, 1989),
obituary.
^
ab"Friedrich Solmsen, Professor, 84," New York Times (February 10, 1989), obituary.
^Hesiodi Theogonia; Opera et dies; Scutum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970); 2nd edition, 1983; 3rd edition, 1990; Goodwin Award of Merit 1951–2007
list of winners.
^
abTabulae, newsletter of the Department of Classics, University of North Carolina (Fall 1989), p. iii.
^"Friedrich Solmsen, Professor, 84," New York Times (February 10, 1989), obituary. Lieselotte Solmsen published two articles on
Herodotus in the 1940s, "Speeches in Herodotus' Account of the Ionic Revolt," American Journal of Philology 64 (1943) 194–207, and "Speeches in Herodotus' Account of the Battle of Plataea," Classical Philology 39 (1944) 241–253.
^Friedrich Solmsen, "Wilamowitz in His Last Ten Years," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 20 (1979), pp. 94 and 101.
^Solmsen's reviews tend to be brief and specific; he rarely wrote essays that developed arguments parallel to the reviewed work in the manner of
Ronald Syme or
Arnaldo Momigliano. Any reviews listed here have been chosen for the significance of the work under review or the depth of Solmsen's engagement with it.
^"Logically defective," was the pronouncement of A.D. Fitton-Brown, while noting that the monograph's psychological approach was welcome; reviewed in Classical Review 19 (1969) 100–101.
Georgia Mouroutsou, "Friedrich Solmsen: German and Anglo-Saxon Virtue," a tribute at
Harmonia, A Forum for the Mediation of Dialogue in Ancient and Modern Academies