Friedrich August Wolf famously criticized the work of Christian Gottlob Heyne. Many subsequent scholars have accepted Wolf’s criticisms noting, among other things, that Heyne was uninterested in the kinds of rigorous textual criticism that would come to define philology’s nineteenth-century status as ‘queen’ of the sciences. This criticism has effectively removed Heyne from the history of philology, especially when it is conceptualized as a ‘modern’ discipline, though he remains a central figure in the histories of classics and archaeology.
But Heyne was the philologist of note in Göttingen from his arrival in 1763 until his death in 1812, at which point Wolf’s own professional reputation had already begun to wane. Moreover, Heyne was at the center of an active and vibrant philological milieu, which he actively influenced in his capacity as Ordinary Professor of Poetry and Eloquence, director of the Philology Seminar, and head of the University Library.
This paper thus argues that it is time for Heyne’s legacy as a philologist to be reassessed. In particular, it challenges conventional accounts of Heyne’s deficiencies as a philologist by way of comparison with Wolf on three points: their ‘vision(s) of philology,’ their ‘philological toolkit(s),’ and their legacies as educators. This comparison demonstrates that accounts of Heyne’s reported antiquarianism have been overstated and argues that Heyne had a much larger role in the development of philology than is often acknowledged. It also questions what it means for philology to be more or less ‘scientific.’
