Martin Schanz
Martin Schanz (12 June 1842 – 15 December 1914) was a German classicist and Plato scholar. He taught at the University of Würzburg from 1867 to 1912, eventually becoming a full professor and serving as rector in 1901–02. He is best known for his history of Roman literature and his groundbreaking, highly critical edition of Plato’s dialogues.
Born in Üchtelhausen, Lower Franconia, Schanz came from a farming family; his father was a teacher. He studied classical philology and philosophy at Munich and Würzburg, with time spent at Bonn and Göttingen. In 1866 he wrote a dissertation reconstructing Socrates’ philosophy from Plato, and he habilitated in 1870. He spent a year in Oxford to study Plato manuscripts and did research trips to Rome and Venice. He became a full professor in Würzburg in 1874 and was ennobled in 1900.
Schanz’s major works include an unfinished seven-volume edition of Plato’s dialogues (1875–1887), which established a solid critical text for Plato, and his four-volume History of Roman Literature (1875–1887), which replaced an older standard work. He died while working on the second part of the last volume; Carl Hosius completed it. He also made important contributions to the study of stichometry, describing partial stichometry, and from 1882 to 1912 edited twenty volumes on the historical syntax of the Greek language. Schanz was widely respected in scholarly circles, and his work continues to influence classical studies today.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 15:00 (CET).