Friedrich Klingner was one of the leading latinists of his generation, and must, with Eduard Fraenkel, share much of the credit for the growing attention paid to Latinistics during the twentieth century. His researches covered classical and post-classical Latin literature. He did not hesitate to draw on earlier Greek and Latin texts where a piece of work required it. He was "making waves" even with his habilitation dissertation on Boethius in which he highlighted numerous problems with the then widely respected opening thesis of Hermann Usener that the Boethius work was in large part derivative from the Protreptikos of Aristotle. Klingner separated out and spelled out the distinctive influences of cynic, stoic, neoplatonic and christian views of the world.
