LACHISH, a town of great importance in S. Palestine, often mentioned in the Tell el-Amarna tablets. It was destroyed by Joshua for joining the league against the Gibeonites (Joshua x. 31-33) and assigned to the tribe of Judah (xv. 39). Rehoboam fortified it (2 Chron. xi. 9). King Amaziah having fled hither, was here murdered by conspirators (2 Kings xiv. 19). Sennacherib here conducted a campaign (2 Kings xviii. 13) during which Hezekiah endeavoured to make terms with him: the campaign is commemorated by bas-reliefs found in Nineveh, now in the British Museum (see G. Smith’s History of Sennacherib, p. 69). It was one of the last cities that resisted Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. xxxiv. 7). The meaning of Micah’s denunciation (i. 13) of the city is unknown. The Onomasticon places it 7 m. from Eleutheropolis on the S. road, which agrees with the generally received identification, Tell el-Ḥesi, an important mound excavated for the Palestine Exploration Fund by Petrie and Bliss, 1890-1893. The name is preserved in a small Roman site in the neighbourhood, Umm Lakis, which probably represents a later dwelling-place of the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of the city.
See W. M. Flinders Petrie, Tell el-Hesy, and F. J. Bliss, A Mound of many Cities, both published by the Palestine Exploration Fund.
(R. A. S. M.)
LACHMANN, KARL KONRAD FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1793-1851), German philologist and critic, was born at Brunswick on the 4th of March 1793. He studied at Leipzig and Göttingen, devoting himself mainly to philological studies. In 1815 he joined the Prussian army as a volunteer chasseur and accompanied his detachment to Paris, but did not encounter the enemy. In 1816 he became an assistant master in the Friedrich Werder gymnasium at Berlin, and a privat-docent at the university. The same summer he became one of the principal masters in the Friedrichs-Gymnasium of Königsberg, where he assisted his colleague, the Germanist Friedrich Karl Köpke (1785-1865) with his edition of Rudolf von Ems’ Barlaam und Josaphat (1818), and also assisted his friend in a contemplated edition of the works of Walther von der Vogelweide. In January 1818 he became professor extraordinarius of classical philology in the university of Königsberg, and at the same time began to lecture on Old German grammar and the Middle High German poets. He devoted himself during the following seven years to an extraordinarily minute study of those subjects, and in 1824 obtained leave of absence in order that he might search the libraries of middle and south Germany for further materials. In 1825 Lachmann was nominated extraordinary professor of classical and German philology in the university of Berlin (ordinary professor 1827); and in 1830 he was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences. The remainder of his laborious and fruitful life as an author and a teacher was uneventful. He died on the 13th of March 1851.
Lachmann, who was the translator of the first volume of P. E. Müller’s Sagabibliothek des skandinavischen Altertums (1816), is a figure of considerable importance in the history of German philology (see Rudolf von Raumer, Geschichte der germanischen Philologie, 1870). In his “Habilitationsschrift” Über die ursprüngliche Gestalt des Gedichts der Nibelunge Not (1816), and still more in his review of Hagen’s Nibelungen and Benecke’s Bonerius, contributed in 1817 to the Jenaische Literaturzeitung he had already laid down the rules of textual criticism and elucidated the phonetic and metrical principles of Middle High German in a manner which marked a distinct advance in that branch of investigation. The rigidly scientific character of his method becomes increasingly apparent in the Auswahl aus den hochdeutschen Dichtern des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (1820), in the edition of Hartmann’s Iwein (1827), in those of Walther von der Vogelweide (1827) and Wolfram von Eschenbach (1833), in the papers “Über das Hildebrandslied,” “Über althochdeutsche Betonung und Verskunst,” “Über den Eingang des Parzivals,” and “Über drei Bruchstücke niederrheinischer Gedichte” published in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy, and in Der Nibelunge Not und die Klage (1826, 11th ed., 1892), which was followed by a critical commentary in 1836. Lachmann’s Betrachtungen über Homer’s Ilias, first published in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy in 1837 and 1841, in which he sought to show that the Iliad consists of sixteen independent “lays” variously enlarged and interpolated, have had considerable influence on modern Homeric criticism (see [Homer]), although his views are no longer accepted. His smaller edition of the New Testament appeared in 1831, 3rd ed. 1846; the larger, in two volumes, in 1842-1850. The plan of Lachmann’s edition, explained by himself in the Stud. u. Krit. of 1830, is a modification of the unaccomplished project of Bentley. It seeks to restore the most ancient reading current in Eastern MSS., using the consent of the Latin authorities (Old Latin and Greek Western Uncials) as the main proof of antiquity of a reading where the oldest Eastern authorities differ. Besides Propertius (1816), Lachmann edited Catullus (1829); Tibullus (1829); Genesius (1834); Terentianus Maurus (1836); Babrius (1845); Avianus (1845); Gaius (1841-1842); the Agrimensores Romani (1848-1852); Lucilius (edited after his death by Vahlen, 1876); and Lucretius (1850). The last, which was the main occupation of the closing years of his life, from 1845, was perhaps his greatest achievement, and has been characterized by Munro as “a work which will be a landmark for scholars as long as the Latin language continues to be studied.” Lachmann also translated Shakespeare’s sonnets (1820) and Macbeth (1829).
See M. Hertz, Karl Lachmann, eine Biographie (1851), where a full list of Lachmann’s works is given; F. Leo, Rede zur Säcularfeier K. Lachmanns (1893); J. Grimm, biography in Kleine Schriften; W. Scherer in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xvii., and J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship, iii. (1908), pp. 127-131.
LACINIUM, PROMUNTURIUM (mod. Capo delle Colonne), 7 m S.E. of Crotona (mod. Cotrone); the easternmost point of Bruttii (mod. Calabria). On the cape still stands a single column of the temple erected to Hera Lacinia, which is said to have been fairly complete in the 16th century, but to have been destroyed to build the episcopal palace at Cotrone. It is a Doric column with capital, about 27 ft. in height. Remains of marble roof-tiles have been seen on the spot (Livy xlii. 3) and architectural fragments were excavated in 1886-1887 by the Archaeological Institute of America. The sculptures found were mostly buried again, but a few fragments, some decorative terra-cottas and a dedicatory inscription to Hera of the 6th century B.C., in private possession at Cotrone, are described by F. von Duhn in Notizie degli scavi, 1897, 343 seq. The date of the erection of the temple may be given as 480-440 B.C.; it is not recorded by any ancient writer.