BOECKH, (Bocrol), PHILIPP AUGUST German classical scholar, was born in Karlsruhe on Nov. 24, 1785. He studied under Wolf at Halle. In 1807 he estab lished himself as privatdozent in the University of Heidelberg and was shortly afterwards appointed a professor extraordinarius, becoming professor two years later. In 18ii he removed to the new Berlin university, having been appointed professor of eloquence and classical literature. He remained there till his death on Aug. 3,1867.
Bockh worked out the ideas of Wolf in regard to philology, and illustrated them by his practice. Discarding the old notion that philology consisted in a minute acquaintance with words and the exercise of the critical art, he regarded it as the entire knowledge of antiquity. He divides it into five parts: first, an inquiry into public acts, civil institutions, and law ; second, an inquiry into private affairs; third, an exhibition of the religions and arts of the ancient nations; fourth, a history of all their moral and physical speculations and beliefs, and of their literatures; and fifth, a complete explanation of the language.
Bockh's works are :—( ) an edition of Pindar, the first volume of which (r8I I) contains the text of the Epinician odes; a treatise, De Metris Pindari, in three books; and Notae Criticae; the second (1819) contains the Scholia; and part ii. of volume ii. (1821) contains a Latin translation, a commentary, the fragments and indices. It was especially the treatise on the metres which placed Bockh in the first rank of scholars. In it he pointed out the close connection between the music and the poetry of the Greeks. He investigated minutely the nature of Greek music and musical instruments, so far as it can be ascertained; and he explained the statements of the ancient Greek writers on rhythm. Thus he founded the scientific treatment of Greek metres. (2) Die Staat shaushaltung der Athener (1817; 2nd ed. 1851, with a supple mentary volume Urkunden fiber das Seewesen des attischen Staats ; 3rd ed. by Fraenkel, 1886), Eng. trans. by Sir George Cornewall Lewis (1828) The Public Economy of Athens. A work of a similar kind was his Metrologische Untersuchungen fiber Gewichte, Miinzfiisse, und Masse des Alterthums (1838). (3) Bockh was chosen as the principal editor of the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecorum. This great work (1828-77) is in four volumes, the third and fourth volumes being edited by J. Franz, E. Curtius, A. Kirchhoff and H. Roehl.
BOckh holds a prominent position amongst the investigators of ancient chronology. His principal works on this subject were: Zur Geschichte der Mondcyclen der Hellenen (1855) ; Epigraphisch-chron ologische Studien (1856) ; tiber die vierjiihrigen Sonnenkreise der Alten (1863), and several papers which he published in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy. Bockh also occupied himself with philosophy. De Platonica corporis mundani fabrica (18o9) was followed by De Platonico Systetnate Caelestium globorum et de vera Indole Astron omiae Philolaice (181o), Manetho und die Hundsternperiode (1845) and Untersuchungen uber das kosmische System des Platon (1852).
Besides his edition of Pindar, Bockh published an edition of the Antigone of Sophocles (1843) with a poetical translation and essays. An early and important work on the Greek tragedians is his Graecae Tragoediae Principum . . . num ea quae supersunt et genuina omnia sint et forma primitiva servata 0808).
Boeckh's Gesammelte kleine Schriften appeared 1858-74. His lec tures, in the years 1809-65, were published by Bratuscheck under the title of Encyklopiidie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissen schaften (2nd ed., Klussmann, 1886). His philological and scientific theories are set forth in C. F. Elze, iTher Philologie als System 0845), and H. Reichhardt, Die Gliederung der Philologie entwickelt (1846). His correspondence with Ottfried Muller appeared at Leipzig in 1883, further letters to Muller (Leipzig, 1908) and to Dissen (Leipzig, 1907). See Sachse, Erinnerungen an August Bockh (1868) ; Stark, in the Verhandlungen der Wiirzburger Philologensammlung (1868) ; Max Hoffmann, August Bockh (19oi) ; and S. Reiter, in Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das klassische Altertum (19°2), P. 436; Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, 3rd ed. (1921), 96 et seq.