Georg Friedrich Schömann (June 28, 1793 - March 25, 1879), German classical scholar, was born at Stralsund in Pomerania. In 1827 he was appointed professor of ancient literature and eloquence in the university of Greifswald, where he died.
Schömann's attention was chiefly devoted to the constitutional and religious antiquities of Greece. His first works on the subject were De comitiis Atheniensium (1819), the first independent account of the forms of Athenian political life, and a treatise De sortitione judicum apud Athenienses (1820). In conjunction with MHE Meier, Schömann wrote Der attische Process (1824, revised ed. by JH Lipsius, 1883-1887), which, although in some respects out of date, still has considerable value.
Among his other works are:
- editions of Isaeus (1831) and Plutarch's Agis and Cleomenes (1839, important for the Attic law of inheritance and the history of the Spartan constitution)
- Antiquitates juris publici Graecorum (1838)
- a critical examination of Grote's account of the Athenian constitution (1854, Eng. trans. by B Bosanquet, 1878) from a conservative point of view
- Griechische Alterthümer (1855-1859; 4th ed. by J. H. Lipsius, 1897? 1902; Eng. trans. of vol. i. by EG Hardy and JS Mann, 1880), treating of the general historical development of the Greek states, followed by a detailed account of the constitutions of Sparta, Crete and Athens, the cults and international relations of the Greek tribes.
See F. S(usemihl) in C Bursian's Biog. Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde (1879); A Baumeister in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xxxii.; C Bursian, Gesch. der class. Philologie in Deutschland (1883), and JE Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship, iii. (1908), p. 165.
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.