Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann

Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann (28 November 1772 – 31 December 1848) was a German classical scholar and philologist.

Hermann maintained that an accurate knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages was the only road to a clear understanding of the intellectual life of the ancient world, and the chief, if not the only, aim of philology.

[1] Hermann devoted his early attention to the classical poetical metres, and published several works on that subject, the most important being Elementa doctrinae metricae (1816), in which he set forth a scientific theory based on the Kantian categories.

[3][1] The principles of the new method he introduced are not only explicitly developed in De Emendenda Ratione Græcæ Grammaticæ, but are practically illustrated in his numerous editions of the ancient classics.

His editions of the classics include several of the plays of Euripides; the Clouds of Aristophanes (1799); Trinummus of Plautus (1800); Poëtica of Aristotle (1802); Orphica, a collection of works of Orphic literature (1805); the Homeric Hymns (1806); and the Lexicon of Photius (1808).