Best remembered for his contribution to the study of Greek music and metre, the German classical philologist Rudolf Westphal (1826─92) had originally studied theology at the University of Marburg before turning his attention to comparative linguistics. He learnt Sanskrit and Arabic and took a keen interest in the Indo-Germanic (Indo-European) languages as well as Semitic grammar. In the late 1850s and early 1860s he joined his friend and fellow classical philologist August Rossbach (1823–98) at the University of Breslau (Wrocław) and later taught at Moscow's Imperial Lyceum. In this work, first published in 1873, Westphal provides the reader with an overview of the Indo-European languages and their sounds. He then gives an extensive account of Indo-European verbs by focusing on the roots derived from Latin and Sanskrit.