MÜLLER, KARL O. (1797–1840), German classical historian and mythologist. Karl Otfried Müller was educated at Breslau and at Berlin under the classical philologist August Böckh. In 1819 he was appointed adjunct professor of ancient art and literature at Göttingen and taught there until 1839, when he left Germany to study and travel. He died of fever in Athens the next year.

Müller may be claimed as the most balanced and versatile classical historian of his time, especially in the area of Greek religion and myth. None before him had portrayed this ancient religion and mythology within such a broad and unfolding historical context. Müller's innovation, as Henri Pinard de la Boullaye said, was "not a thesis but a method." Müller related cult and myth, for example, to such complex matters as the shift from...