Admiring the Greeks with Roman eyes: F. A. Wolf, Quintilian, and the Latin roots of German philhellenism

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Abstract This paper argues for the underlying importance of Latin learning in a key text of German philhellenism, Friedrich August Wolf’s ‘Darstellung der Alterthums-Wissenschaft’ (1807). It contends that Wolf supported his educational authority by modelling himself on the Roman rhetorical writer Quintilian, and that he drew on him to formulate the notion of a philological encyclopaedia. First, this paper uncovers how Wolf’s self-staging at the start of the ‘Darstellung’ channels Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria. Then, it shows that Wolf argued that Altertumswissenschaft was ‘scientific’ because it was ‘encyclopaedic’, and that he drew on Quintilian not necessarily to conceptualize, but to formulate, this conception. Uncovering the presence of Quintilian in Wolf’s ‘Darstellung’, an influential programmatic text that asserted the superiority of Greece over Rome, this paper argues for the persistence of Latin learning, just as it was dismissed, as a key irony underlying this foundational work of modern classical philology.