Barthelemy Jean Jacques

Barthelemy, Jean Jacques, born at Cassis, near Marseilles, in 1716, and entered the priesthood. He had a predilection for Oriental languages, and to this was added soon a taste for classical antiquities and numismatics. Coming to Paris in 1744 he became assistant to De Boze, the secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions, to whose office he succeeded. In a journey to Italy he acquired the friendship of the Duc de Choiseul, through whose influence he enjoyed several lucrative pensions. He spent thirty years from 1757 on the composition of his great work, Le Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis, the object of which was to throw into a popular form all that was then known of Greek archaeology. His high reputation saved him from persecution during the Reign of Terror, and he died in 1795.