Rudolf Keydell

Max Rudolf Keydell (30 March 1887 – 21 May 1982) was a German classical philologist and librarian.

Beginning in 1923, Keydell produced works about the 5th-century AD poet Nonnus, the author of the Dionysiaca, a 48-book epic poem. He continued working on this text through the rise of Nazism and the World War II, publishing eight articles on the topic between 1933 and 1955. Shortly before 1950, he fled from East Germany to West Berlin. Keydell's critical edition of the Dionysiaca was published in 1959, replacing that by Arthur Ludwich, published fifty years earlier. In 1967, he edited the Histories by Agathias for the Berlin series of the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae.

In 2015, Domenico Accorinti described Keydell and as the "greatest Nonnian scholars of the twentieth century", in Brill’s Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis, which was dedicated to the pair.

Principal publications