MÜLLER, Karl Otfried, an eminent writer on the mythology and history of Greece, was the son of a chaplain in the Prussian army, and was born at Brieg in Silesia in 1797. After attending the gymnasium of his native town, he entered the university of Breslau in 1813, and began to study at Berlin in 1815. In 1817 a little treatise, entitled Algineticorum Liber, betrayed the depth of his mythological knowledge, and laid the foundation of his fame and fortune. Two years afterwards, when scarcely twenty-one, he was promoted to a chair in the university of Göttingen. Here he continued for more than twenty years to lecture on archaeology and art, and to produce works with a rapidity which sometimes entailed carelessness and false generalizing. In 1820 his Orchomenos and the Minyans appeared, and communicated to philological studies in Germany an impulse which was felt in the course of time throughout the rest of Europe. By his method of analyzing the mythical cycles, and thus detecting the historical elements around which these had grown, he bade fair to evolve a history of Greece of the same satisfactory nature as Niebuhr's History of Rome. He continued to follow out this plan in his Dorians, published at Breslau, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1824. The new and striking feature in this work was the attempt to show that the natives of Doris were the happiest, the wisest, the bravest, and the best of all the Greek races. Such a view, so directly opposed to the received opinions, contributed in no small degree to secure for the book a European reputation. It was hailed, even by those who dissented from its novel opinions, as a cheering improvement on the dull round of those compilations that had hitherto been palmed off upon the world as histories of Greece. An English translation by H. Tuffnell and G. C. Lewis, with emendations and additions by the author himself, appeared at Oxford in 1830. Prevented by certain scruples from advancing any further in the path of investigation which he had hitherto pursued so successfully, he had published a great work, entitled The Etruscans, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1828. His Manual of the History of Ancient Art appeared at Breslau two years afterwards. This work, characterized in an especial degree by his usual keen thinking, curious research, and forcible style, was considered one of his finest productions, and passed through a second edition in 1835. All this time his restless and rapid intellect was producing numerous articles for periodicals and encyclopaedias, and was planning a History of Greek Literature. The first volume of this work appeared at Göttingen in 1839, and was translated into English soon afterwards. Müller now laid aside his pen. He had long desired to visit that land whose poetry and mythology had been his life-long study, and whose rich scenery and glorious sky had so often passed before the eye of his imagination. Accordingly he set out for Greece in 1839. On his arrival his bodily activity was as enthusiastically exercised as his intellectual in searching for the remnants of antiquity. During the heat of a July day, while conducting an excavation among the ruins of Delphi, he was seized with a fever. He was conducted to Athens, and died there on the 1st August 1840. An appropriate resting-place was found for this great Hellenistic scholar in the precincts of the old academy. His merits were celebrated by Lücke in a work entitled Erinnerungen an Karl Otfried Müller, 8vo, Göttingen, 1841.
Müller. Among the works of Müller which have not been mentioned above are,—Minerva Poliadis Sacra et Aedem in Arce Athenorum illustravit M., 4to, Göttingen, 1820; On the Abode, the Descent, and the Ancient History of the People of Macedonia, 8vo, Berlin, 1825; De Phidiae Vita et Operibus, 4to, Göttingen, 1827; and editions of the Eumenides of Æschylus, 4to, Göttingen, 1833, the De Lingua Latina of Varro, 8vo, Leipzig, 1833, and the De Verborum Significatione of Festus, 8vo, Leipzig, 1839. His History of the Literature of Greece, composed of the volume which had appeared in his lifetime and the volume which he had left unfinished, was edited by his brother, in 8vo, Breslau, 1841. The Dorians and the Orchomenos and the Minyans were published together by F. W. Schneidewin, under the title of the History of Hellenic Races and Cities, in 3 vols., Breslau, 1844.