Sketch of' the Life of Professor Heeren. 109 



died at Lyons where he had come in 1804, in the suite of the 

 Pope, for Napoleon'*s coronation. 



During the carnival the hbraries are shut. Then M. Heeren 

 visited the museum of the Vatican, where the statues, sarcophagi, 

 and bas-reliefs particularly drew his attention. In the museum 

 was a sarcophagus, the figure of which Winkelman has errone-- 

 ously explained by the murder of Agamemnon. Heeren dis- 

 covered that it represented the murder of Clytemnestra by 

 Orestes and Pylades. Having his head still full of the Greek 

 tragedies, it was easy for him to demonstrate that by reference to 

 a scene of iEschylus, which the artist had almost exactly copied. 

 He printed a paper on this sarcophagus ( Commentatio in Opits 

 coelatum Musdcei Pii Clementini, Romce 1786) subsequently 

 inserted in German in the Bibliotheque de la Litterature ei de 

 VArt Ancien. He wrote a second dissertation on a fragment of 

 marble covered with small bas-reliefs and inscriptions in the 

 style of the Table of Isis. He did not, however, forget the 

 special object of his journey, but collated a manuscript of Sto- 

 baeas in forty-three leaves, which furnished him with a multi- 

 tude of variations and corrections. He speaks with enthusiasm 

 of the happy life which he led at Rome, in the study of anti- 

 quities and bas-reliefs ; and of the vivid impression made upon 

 him by the Coliseum, with its gigantic shadows in the moon- 

 light ; the interior of the Pantheon, when the hght clouds are 

 seen flying past its cupola ; the magic light of the Church of St 

 Peter, and its luminous cross during Passion- week. * 



After a residence of seven months, he left Rome on the 16th 

 of September, to go to Naples, where he admired nature in al! 

 her magnificence. The Hbrary Al Capo di Monti contained 

 two manuscripts of the Eclogse, one of which is the oldest ma-^ 

 nuscript of that author that has come down to us. At Naples 

 he knew the celebrated Filangieri. On the 1st November he 

 left Naples, and returned to Rome, where he met with Goethe 

 and Moritz. At length he returned by Florence and Milan. 

 In the Ambrosian Library at Milan, he found some fragments 

 of Stobaeus. He passed through Genoa, Turin, Geneva and 

 Lyons, and arrived on the 18th February 1787 at Paris, where 

 he spent two months. Villoison and Behn de Ballu, to whonr 

 he was recommended, were absent. Barthelemy, Larcher, An 



