Peter Paul Dobree

Peter Paul Dobree (born June 26, 1782 in Guernsey ; died September 24, 1825 in Cambridge ) was a British classical philologist and Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University .

After attending the Reading School in Reading , England under Richard Valpy (1754-1836), who ran the school for fifty years, he entered Trinity College , Cambridge as a student . There he obtained his BA in 1804 , and three years later, in 1807, an MA. In 1806 he was elected a Fellow of the College. As was customary at the time, he was ordained a priest in 1813, a prerequisite for remaining and serving as a fellow at the college. In 1823 he became a Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, one of the oldest chairs in Great Britain. Soon after, he fell ill and died after only two years.

Dobree was a friend of Richard Porson , who died in 1808. Together with James Henry Monk (1784-1856), Regius Professor from 1809 to 1823 , and Charles James Blomfield (1786-1857), Bishop of Chester from 1824 , he was given the task of collecting the written estate of Porsons, which had been bequeathed to Trinity College was to surrender. Illnesses and a trip to Leiden in the Netherlands in 1815 delayed the project until 1820. In that year Dobree first published the comedy Der Reichtum des Aristophanes with his and Porson's notes, as it were as a starting point for the subsequent Aristophanica from Porson's estate. He submitted Porson's transfer of the Gale manuscript of Photios' Lexicon , which was kept in the college library , in 1822 and added an appendix Lexicon rhetoricum , which was based on a manuscript of the Harpokration also located in Cambridge . After his death, James Scholefield (1789-1853), his successor on the chair, published four volumes from Dobree's notes on Greek and Latin authors, especially the Attic speakers , under the title Adversaria in 1831 and 1833 . In 1835 Scholefield also published Dobree's notes on inscriptions.

While Dobree followed Porson's text-critical approach in analyzing Aristophanes, for example, he opened up new avenues in the investigations devoted to the speakers, especially to Demosthenes and Lysias . Many of his writings were published several times in the 19th century. In 1810, he helped found the Valpy-operated Classical Journal , a forerunner of scientific journals that appeared between 1810 and 1829 and for which Dobree contributed articles and reviews.

Publications (selection)

• Αριστοφανους Πλουτος . J. Smith, Cambridge 1820.
• Ricardi Prosoni Notae in Aristophanem. J. Smith, Cambridge 1820.
• Φωτιου… Λεξεων συναγωγη . E codice Galeano descripsit Ricardus Porsonus. Mawman, London 1822.
  • New edition: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010, ISBN 978-0-511-71130-5 .
• Greek inscriptions from the marbles in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. 1824.
• Adversaria. Four volumes. J. Smith, Cambridge 1831-1833.
  • New edition: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010, ISBN 978-0-511-71073-5 and ISBN 978-0-511-71074-2 .
• Lexicon rhetoricum Cantabrigiense. Pitt Press, Cambridge 1834.
• Miscellaneous notes on inscriptions. Pitt Press, Cambridge 1835.

literature

• John Bake : Scholica hypomnemata. Volume 2. Leiden 1839, pp. II – V.
• John Edwin Sandys : A History of Classical Scholarship. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1908, pp. 399 f. ( Text archive - Internet Archive ).
• Dobrée, Peter Paul . In: John Archibald Venn (Ed.): Alumni Cantabrigienses . A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900. Part 2: From 1752 to 1900 , Volume 2 : Chalmers – Fytche . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1944, pp. 309 ( venn.lib.cam.ac.uk Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).