Domenico Comparetti

Domenico Comparetti (born June 27, 1835 in Rome , † January 20, 1927 in Florence ) was an Italian classical philologist , papyrologist and folklorist .

Life

Domenico Comparetti studied natural sciences and mathematics at La Sapienza University in Rome until 1855 and then worked in his uncle's pharmacy. In his free time, especially at night, he dealt intensively with various foreign languages. He taught himself ancient and modern Greek, Latin, French, German and English by reading and talking to native speakers, and also acquired knowledge of Arabic, Turkish and Egyptian hieroglyphics .

Although he was self-taught, Comparetti soon succeeded in gaining a foothold in the academic world: in the 1850s he published some text-critical studies on the Attic orator Hypereides , whose speeches had been given new additions a few years earlier thanks to a papyrus find. Comparetti prepared a new edition, the first sample of which appeared in the Rheinisches Museum für Philologie magazine in 1858 . In 1859 Comparetti was appointed professor of the Greek language at the University of Pisa . In 1872 he moved to the University of Florence . In 1891 he was appointed Senator of the Kingdom of Italy.

The focus of Comparetti's research is the tradition and reception of antiquity as well as comparative research on myths . His book Virgilio nel media evo ("Virgil in the Middle Ages"), in which he presented and analyzed the biographical and literary tradition of Virgil in detail, has been a standard work since its first publication (1876) and has been translated into German and English. Of course, Comparetti had critics abroad, especially Theodor Mommsen . Nevertheless, he experienced international recognition and was a member of many scientific societies, including the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (1875), the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (corresponding member 1879), the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences (corresponding member 1893), the Academy of Sciences to Vienna (corresponding member 1896), the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (external member 1896), the Russian Academy of Sciences (corresponding member 1908) and the British Academy (corresponding member 1916). The German Archaeological Institute appointed him a corresponding member in 1858 and a full member in 1904, and the German Oriental Society named him a full member in 1869. In 1906 the University of Oxford awarded him the title D. Litt. honorary , the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies made him an honorary member.

Fonts (selection)

• Il discorso d'Iperide in favore d'Euxenippo scoperto in Egitto e pubblicato in Inghilterra nel 1853, ora per la prima volta riprodotto in Italia con un discorso critico e schiarimenti da Domenico Comparetti . Pisa 1861
• Il discorso d'Iperide pei morti nella guerra Lamiaca . Pisa 1864
• Intorno al Libro dei sette Savj di Roma . Pisa 1865
• Saggi dei dialetti greci dell 'Italia meridionale . Pisa 1866
• Edipo e la mitologia comparata . Pisa 1867
• Ricerche intorno al libro di Sindibâd . Milan 1869
  • English translation: Researches Respecting the Book of Sindibâd . London 1882
• Virgilio nel media evo . Livorno 1872. 2nd edition in two volumes, Florence 1896
  • German translation: Virgil in the Middle Ages . Leipzig 1875
  • English translation: Virgil in the Middle Ages . London 1895. 2nd edition 1908
• Sull'autenticità della epistola ovidiana di Saffo a Faone e sul valore di essa per le questioni Saffiche . Florence 1876
• Iscrizioni greche di Olimpia e di Ithaca . Rome 1881
• Il Kalevala; o, la poesia tradizionale dei Finni. Studio storico-critico suile origini delle grandi epopee nazionale . Rome 1891
  • German translation: The Kalewala, or: The traditional poetry of the Finns . Hall 1892
  • English translation: The Traditional Poetry of the Finns . London 1898
• Le leggi di Gortyna e le altre iscrizioni arcaiche Cretesi . Milan 1893 ( Monumenti Antichi 3)
• Procopio di Cesarea, La Guerra Gotica. Testo greco emendato sui manoscritti, con traduzione italiana . Three volumes, Rome 1895–1898 ( Fonti per la storia d'Italia 23–25)
• Homeri Iliad cum scholiis. Codex Venetus A Marcianus 454 phototypice editus . Leiden 1901
• Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli (Editor): Poesia e pensiero del mondo antico . Naples 1944 (collected writings)

literature

• Alberto Chiappelli: Per Domenico Comparetti . In: Rendiconti Lincei . Volume 3 (1927), pp. 357-378
• Enrico Cocchia: Domenico Comparetti . In: Μουσεῖον . Volume 2, 1926 (1927), pp. 245-248
• Andrea Ferretti: Domenico Comparetti. In memoriam . In: Neuphilologische Mitteilungen . Volume 28 (1927), pp. 64-68
• Edmund Hauler : Domenico Comparetti 1835–1927 . In: Almanac of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna . Volume 77 (1927), pp. 272-279
• Giorgio Pasquali : Domenico Comparetti . In: Aegyptus . Volume 8 (1927), pp. 117-136
• Antonio Sogliano : Domenico Comparetti . In: Nuova Rivista Storica . Volume 11 (1927), pp. 386-389.
• Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli:  Comparetti, Domenico. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 27:  Collenuccio – Confortini. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1982.
• Giovanni Indelli: Domenico Comparetti (1835-1927) . In: Mario Capasso (Ed.): Hermae. Scholars and Scholarship in Papyrology II . Pisa / Rome 2010, pp. 21–31 (with picture)

Web links

• Works by and about Domenico Comparetti  in the German Digital Library