Friedrich Leo (1851–1914) was one of the greatest Latin scholars of the imperial German university system. Professor at Göttingen from 1889, he combined textual criticism with literary history to an unusual degree. His Geschichte der römischen Literatur (1913) was a landmark work, and his editions of Plautus (1895–1896) and Seneca's tragedies set new standards. Leo's Plautine scholarship was transformative: he was the first to systematically analyse Plautus's metrical practice, using it as a tool for detecting interpolations and establishing the text.
Leo's edition of Plautus, published by Weidmann in Berlin (2 vols., 1895–1896), represented a dramatic advance over previous editions. Leo was the first editor to take full account of the Ambrosian palimpsest (Codex Ambrosianus, 4th–5th century), the oldest witness to Plautus's text, which had been imperfectly read by earlier scholars. His text is characterised by rigorous metrical analysis and a willingness to identify passages he considered interpolated. W. M. Lindsay's OCT (1904–1905) drew heavily on Leo's work while sometimes differing on individual readings.
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