The son of a dentist from Thüringen, Erbse studied classical philology in Hamburg, where he was well known for his lively hat-wear and received his doctorate in 1940.
In 1948 he completed his habilitation at Graz with a study of Attic lexica; in the same year he received his first lectureship, in Hamburg.
[1] His research was devoted to textual criticism and editions of Greek fragments and scholia, and to interpretation of Homer, Herodotus, and Thucydides.
Erbse acted as co-editor of the well-known journals Glotta and Hermes, and in 1965 was one of the editors of the Lexikon der Alten Welt (LAW), alongside Carl Andresen, Olof Gigon, Karl Schefold, Karl Friedrich Stroheker, and Ernst Zinn.
With Kurt Latte he published the Lexica Graeca minora, but he remains best known for his masterpiece, a huge seven-volumes critical edition of Iliad's Scholia vetera.