All Scholars

Karl Hosius was born into a prominent family of politicians and artists. At the Hamm Gymnasium he developed an interest in classics and text editing under the tutelage of the editor of Tacitus, Carl Jesaias Heraeus (1818-91). He immersed himself in the precepts of the Bonn school where his greatest influences were Franz Bücheler (1837-1908) and Hermann Usener (1834-1905).  While at Bonn he joined the local Philological Association within the Kartellverband katholischer Deutscher Studentenvereine, a cartel association of Catholic student societies. Karl Lachmann had laid down the principle of selecting the most reliable manuscript on the basis of previous acceptance by other scholars and on one’s own best judgement. Once the manuscript is chosen, the editor charts the divergences from it in other manuscripts, keeping the chosen manuscript as a basis. Hosius’s first work was a study of the manuscripts of Juvenal. Usener had published the scholia to Lucan in 1869 and Hosius edited Lucan’s text in 1892, dedicating the result to Usener.  In the course of making his habilitation, Hosius traveled to many European libraries and published the results of his researches in a series of articles in Rheinisches Museum encompassing Persius, Aulus Gellius, Propertius, Seneca, and others. He also examined specific problems in the text of Virgil’s Eclogues. Many of his emendations and other judgements have not been accepted by later scholars, but his reporting of manuscripts and his editorial standards gave a foundation and model for later scholars.  

        He is best remembered today for his revision of Martin Schanz’s (1842-1914) Geschichte der römischen Literatur. As Hosius was publishing his work on Seneca’s philosophical works, Schanz suddenly died. Hosius succeeded him at Würzburg and took up the completion of the third and fourth volume of the history (IV.2 in 1920; III in 1922), then gradually revised and expanded the earlier volumes (I in 1927, II in 1935). He maintained the original structure but added the latest research. The church historian Gustav Krüger (1862-1940) co-authored the section on fifth- and sixth-century CE Christian literature, but the rest was done by Hosius alone. The work was reprinted virtually unchanged in 1959, 1966-7 & 1979-80 and though in constant use, was only revised and expanded at the turn of the 20^th century. 

        In 1931 he inaugurated Würzburger Studien zur Altertumswissenschaft to publish the work of his students, edited with students Friedrich Pfister (1883-1967) and Joseph Vogt (1895-1986). The journal ceased publication in 1941.