Origins & Early Life

Eduard David Mortier Fraenkel FBA ((1888-03-17)17 March 1888 – (1970-02-05)5 February 1970) was a German classical scholar who served as the Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at the University of Oxford from 1935 until 1953. Born to a family of assimilated Jews in the German Empire, he studied classics at the universities of Berlin and Göttingen. In 1934, antisemitic legislation introduced by the Nazi Party forced him to seek refuge in the United Kingdom where he eventually settled at Corpus Christi College. Fraenkel established his academic reputation with the publication of a monograph on the Roman comedian Plautus, Plautinisches im Plautus ('Plautine Elements in Plautus', 1922).

Pivotal Works & Achievements

The book was developed from his doctoral thesis and changed the study of Roman comedy by asserting that Plautus was a more innovative playwright than previously thought. In 1950, he published a three-volume commentary on the Agamemnon by the Greek playwright Aeschylus which has been described by the classicist H. J. Rose as "perhaps the most erudite that any Greek play has ever had". He wrote a monograph, entitled Horace (1957), on the Roman poet Horace after retiring from his teaching post.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

Biographers place...

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