Scaliger

Scaliger. 1. JULIUS CAESAR SCALIGER, born at La Rocca, on the Lake of Garda, in 1484, became page to the Emperor Maximilian, and until 1514 followed with much distinction the profession of arms. He then entered the university of Bologna, and for some few years combined fighting with the study of medicine, until in 1525 illness compelled him to finally abandon the sword. He spent the remaining years of his life at Agen. He attacked Erasmus in a violent and overbearing style, wrote a Latin grammar, and began a treatise on Poetics, but his really important work was the exposition, in a series of commentaries, of the Physics and Metaphysics, of Aristotle. Scarcely anything was published by him until just before his death, when his Exercitationes on Cardan's treatise De Subtilitate appeared, and for many years remained a popular text-book of Aristotelianism.

2. JOSEPH JUSTUS SCALIGER, tenth son of the foregoing, was born at Agen in 1540, and acquired, as his father's amanuensis, a sound knowledge of Latin and habits of observation. In 1558 he went to Paris, where he mastered Greek and made some progress in Hebrew and Arabic. Being a Protestant convert, he fled after the massacre of St. Bartholomew to Geneva, where he lectured for a while; but teaching was not to his taste, and, returning to Poitou, he spent twenty years in broken but fruitful study. His Conjectanea in Varronem, and his editions of Festus, Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus marked a new era in historical criticism, and the De Emendatione Temporum (1583) established a new and sound system of chronology. His reputation now brought him an invitation from the university of Leyden, and in 1593 he succeeded to the chair of Lipsius on the understanding that he should not lecture. He died in 1609.