German archæologist and historian, born at Lübeck on the 2nd of September 1814. On completing his university studies he was chosen by C. A. Brandis to accompany him on a journey to Greece for the prosecution of archæological researches. Curtius then became Otfried Müller’s companion in his exploration of the Peloponnese, and on Müller’s death in 1840 returned to Germany. In 1844 he became an extraordinary professor at the university of Berlin, and in the same year was appointed tutor to Prince Frederick William (afterwards the Emperor Frederick III.)—a post which he held till 1850. After holding a professorship at Göttingen and undertaking a further journey to Greece in 1862, Curtius was appointed (in 1863) ordinary professor at Berlin. In 1874 he was sent to Athens by the German government, and concluded an agreement by which the excavations at Olympia were entrusted exclusively to Germany. Curtius died at Berlin on the 11th of July 1896. His best-known work is his History of Greece (1857–1867, 6th ed., 1887–1888; Eng. trans. by A. W. Ward, 1868–1873). It presented in an attractive style what were then the latest results of scholarly research, but was criticized as wanting in erudition. His other writings are chiefly archæological. The most important are Die Akropolis von Athen (1844); Naxos (1846); Peloponnesos, eine historisch-geographische Beschreibung der Halbinsel (1851); Olympia (1852); Die Ionier vor der ionischen Wanderung (1855); Attische Studien (1862–1865); Ephesos (1874); Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia (1877, &c.); Olympia und Umgegend (edited by Curtius and F. Adler, 1882); Olympia; Die Ergebnisse der von dem deutschen Reich veranstalteten Ausgrabung (with F. Adler, 1890–1898); Die Stadtgeschichte von Athen (1891); Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1894). His collected speeches and lectures were published under the title of Altertum und Gegenwart (5th ed., 1903 foll.), to which a third volume was added under the title of Unter drei Kaisern (2nd ed., 1895).
A full list of his writings will be found in L. Gurlitt, Erinnerungen an Ernst Curtius (Berlin, 1902); see also article by O. Kern in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xlvii. (1903), to which may be added Ernst Curtius. Ein Lebensbild in Briefen, by F. Curtius (1903); T. Hodgkin, Ernest Curtius (1905). See also “The Causes of Dislike toward Socrates” and “Socrates as an Influence and as a Man.”
