The philologist Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1775–1853) combined his career as a senior master at schools in Frankfurt and Hannover with the publication of school textbooks on German and Latin, and academic research in ancient history and languages. He was a co-founder of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica series of historical sources, still widely consulted today, and is also remembered for his role in the decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform. During his lifetime he was best known for his studies of the Umbrian and Oscan languages (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection) and this collection of essays on the geography and history of pre-Roman Italy, published 1840–2. Grotefend emphasises the need to consult the earliest, near-contemporary Greek sources, rather than relying on later accounts. He discusses Greek and Roman myths relating to Italy, the different ethnic groups within the pre-Roman population, and evidence for their family or clan names.
