All Scholars

JENSEN, Christian Cornelius

  • Christian Cornelius Jensen
  • Date of Birth: July 20, 1883
  • Born City: Archsum auf Sylt
  • Born State/Country: Germany
  • Parents: Christian, a local historian and teacher, & Laura Lorenson J.
  • Date of Death: September 18, 1941
  • Death City: Berlin
  • Death State/Country: Germany
  • Married: Anna Kroll, 1915
  • Education:

    Study at Marburg, 1902-4; Kiel, 1904-6; Ph.D., Kiel, 1906; Phil. habil., Marburg, 1910. 
  • Dissertation:

    Philodemi Peri oikonomias qui dicitur libellus, (Ph.D., Kiel, 1906; publ. Leipzig: Teubner, 1906); "De Menandri codice Cairensi" (Phil. habil., Marburg, 1912; publ. as RhM n.f. 65 (1910) 539-77).
  • Professional Experience:

    Teacher, Kiel Gymnasium; Wandsbek; assoc. prof., Königsberg, 1912-13; prof. 1917-21; prof., Jena, 1913-17; Kiel, 1921-6; Bonn, 1926-37; Berlin, 1937-40.
  • Publications:

    “Zu Menanders Epitrepontes (v. 432-56),” RhM 65 (1910)  635-6; “Zu d. Menanderpapyrus in Kairo,” Hermes 49 (1914) 382-432; “Zu den Demen des Eupolis,” Hermes 51 (1916) 321-54; Hyperidis Orationes sex cum ceterarum fragmentispost Fridericum Blass papyris denuo collatis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1917); Neoptolemos und Horaz (Berlin: APAW by Reimer, 1919); Philodemos über die Gedichte: fünftes Buch (Berlin: Weidmann, 1923); “Menanderstudien,” RhM  n.f. 76 (1927) 1-13; Reliquiae in papyris et membranis servatae (Berlin: Weidmann, 1929); “Die Bibliothek von Herculaneum,”Bonner Jahrbücher des Rheinischen Landesmuseums in Bonn und des Rheinischen Amtes für Bodendenkmalpflege im Landschaftsverband Rheinland und des Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande 135 (1930) 49-61;Ein neuer Brief Epikurs, AGG supplement (Berlin: Weidmann, 1933); “Aristoteles in den Auge des Machaon,” RhM n.f. 83 (1934) 193-200; “Herakleides vom Pontos bei Philodem und Horaz,” Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Klasse 23 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1936) 292-320; Die Parabase in der Demen des Eupolis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1939).
  • Notes:

    Christian Jensen is best remembered for his pioneering work on establishing a text of Philodemus and showing his influence on Roman poets of the Republic, a task which required skill as a papyrologist, literary historian, and philologist. At Kiel he was influenced by the papyrologist Siegfried Sudhaus (1863-1914) who encouraged him to work on the papyri of Menander and Philodemus in the National Museum in Naples, which led to his dissertation on the preface of Philodemus’ treatise on household management, followed in 1923 by an edition of the fifth book of Philodemus On Poems, the most important of Jensen’s Herculaneum work in that it showed its importance as a source for Horace’s Ars Poetica. Neoptolemos und Horaz (1919) treated the influence of the Hellenistic literary critic Neoptolemus of Parium on Horace's Ars Poetica. Jensen’s habilitation thesis proposed emendations in the Cairo codex of Menander discovered by the Egyptologist Gustave Lefèbvre (1879-1957) at Kôm Ishgaou in 1905, which were adopted in Alfred Körte’s (1866-1946) edition of 1912 and Sudhaus’s edition of 1914. In 1929 Jensen published a critical edition of all the surviving fragments of Menander, giving fresh resources for further study of the playwright. In 1916 he published fragments of Demos, one of two known political plays by the Old Comedy playwright Eupolis (1916; rev. 1939). Jensen also edited six orations of Hyperides, adding recent papyrus discoveries to the edition of Friedrich Blass (1843-1907). His last publication was an analysis of a newly discovered letter of Epicurus.
  • Sources:

     K. Preisendanz, Papyrusfunde und papyrusforschung (1933) 56, 50, 216; L. Deubner, Forschungen und Fortschritte 16 (1940) 363-4; Gerhard Baader, NDB 10 (1974) 408-9
  • Author: Ward Briggs