97 



SCALIGER, JULIUS CAESAR. 



SCAMOZZ[, VINCENZIO. 



293 



having driven away Autonio della Soala, an illegitimate son of the last 

 lord. After some more vicissitudes, Verona camo into the possession 

 of the Venetians in the year 1409. 



SCA'LIGER, JULIUS C^SAR, was born, according to the state- 

 ment of his son, on the 23rd of April 1484 in the castle of Riva, near 

 the Lago di Garda. The history of the descent and the early youth 

 of Scaliger is involved in inextricable difficulties, as he himself at one 

 period of his life made pretensions which, though supported by his 

 son, are irreconcileable with other well-attested facts, and which were 

 contradicted and ridiculed in his own lifetime by eminent contem- 

 poraries. His real name was Della Scala, and he pretended to be 

 descended from the princely family of the Scalas of Verona. There 

 is a patent of naturalisation, which in 1528 he requested and obtained 

 from Francis I., king of France, in which he is called "Julius Csesar 

 della Soala de Bordone, doctor of physic, a native of Verona in Italy." 

 This document, which would surely have mentioned his noble descent, 

 if it had been known, shows either that his pretenbions were without 

 any foundation, or at least that he did not indulge in this vanity till 

 at a more advanced period of life. Tiraboschi calls him the son of 

 Benedetto Bordone, a native of Padua, who lived at Venice, carried 

 on the trade of illuminator, and assumed the name of Scaliger, either 

 because he had a scale for his sign, or becaiise he lived in a street 

 called Scala. According to Scaliger's own account, he had in his 

 twelfth year been made a page to the Emperor Maximilian, whom he 

 served for seventeen years, both in peace and war. Afterwards he 

 retired to Ferrara, where he received a pension from the Duke of 

 Ferrara. His parents had died in the meantime, and he now deter- 

 mined to abandon his military pursuits and to apply himself to study. 

 He therefore went to Bologna with the intention of studying theology 

 and of entering into the Franciscan order ; but he soon gave up bis 

 theological studies, returned to the military profession, and served for 

 some time in Piedmont under the French viceroy. At Turin he was 

 persuaded by a physician to begin the study of physic, which he did 

 in his leisure hours, and without leaving the army. About this time 

 he also commenced learning Greek, of which he had hitherto been 

 entirely ignorant. As he advanced, his delight in his new studies 

 increased ; and this, as well as frequent attacks of the gout, at length 

 induced him to give up his military life, and to devote himself entirely 

 to his favourite pursuits. In 1525 he accompanied Antonio de la 

 llovtra, who had been made Bishop of Agen, to his new diocese, in the 

 capacity of physician. The degree of doctor of physic, which is men- 

 tioned iu the document above referred to, must have been obtained 

 before this time, but in what university is uncertain, though it is 

 generally supposed that he obtained it at Padua. It was at first his 

 intention not to stay at Agen, but soon after hia arrival there he fell 

 in love with Andietta de Rogues, a young lady of a noble and wealthy 

 family, whom he married. He now settled at Agen, where he lived 

 until his death, on the 21st of October 1558. He continued the 

 practice of physic, and at the same time prosecuted his scientific and 

 literary studies. 



Considering that Scaliger commerj ced his studies at so advanced a 

 period of life, and considering the number as well as the value of his 

 works, none of which were published before he had attained the age 

 of forty-seven, it must be owned that he was one of the most extra- 

 ordinary men of the age. He had a most tenacious memory and a 

 sound understanding. His son praises him especially for his great 

 love of truth, but he was of a very irritable temperament and exces- 

 sively vain ; and he treated every opponent or antagonist with the 

 utmost contempt. Although he thus provoked many bitter enemies, 

 he had many friends among his contemporaries ; and scholars of sub- 

 sequent ages, such as Lipsius, Casaubon, Vossius, Huet, and others, 

 have bestowed on him the most extravagant eulogiums. His fame as a 

 scholar, though very great in his own days, has in the more just appre- 

 ciation of subsequent times been far eclipsed by that of his son Joseph. 



The following is a list of his principal works : ' Commeutarii in 

 Hippocratis librum De Insomniis,' Graec. et Lat., 8vo, Lyon, 1538. 

 ' De Causis Linguae Latinte Libri xviii.,' 4to, Lyon, 1540, reprinted at 

 Geneva in 1580. This is the first great work which was written on 

 the Latin language in modern times, and it is still valuable, though it 

 contains a great many fanciful subtleties. ' Exercitationuna Exoteri- 

 carum Liber Quintus-decirnusdeSubtilitate ad Hierony mum Cardanum,' 

 4 to, Paris, 1557. The fourteen preceding books, which had no relation 

 to Cardanus, have never been published. ' Poetices Libri Septem,' 

 fol., Lyon, 1561. This work perhaps contributed most to the reputation 

 of the author, though it shows that he possessed more grammatical 

 knowledge than profound critical or creative powers. 'In Theophrasti 

 Libros Sex de Causis Plantarum Commentarii,' fol., Geneva, 1566; 

 ' Commentarii in Aristoteli adscriptos Libros Duos de Plantis,' Geneva, 

 1566 ; ' Aristotelis Histories Animalium Liber Decimus, cum vers. et 

 comment.,' 8vo, Lyou, 1584; 'Animadversiones in Theophrasti Historias 

 Plantarum,' 8vo, Lyon, 1584 ; ' J. C. Sealigeri adv. Desid. Erasmum 

 Orationes Duse, Eloquentise Romanse Vindices, cum ejusdem Epistolis 

 et Opusculis,' 4to, Toulouse, 1621. The first of these orations, which 

 were directed against the work of Erasmus, entitled ' Ciceronianus, 

 sive de optimo Dicendi Genere,' was published at Paris in 1531, and 

 appears to have been his earliest work. Scaliger also published a 

 number of Latin poems, which however are of very little value. The 

 style is often obscure and bombastic. 



SCALIGER, JOSEPH JUSTUS, the son of Julius Caesar Scaliger, 

 was born on the 4th of August 1540, at Agen. He received his 

 earliest instruction from his father. At the age of eleven he was sent 

 with two of his brothers to the college of Bordeaux, where he applied 

 himself chiefly to the study of the Latin language. After a stay of 

 three years at Bordeaux he was compelled by the appearance of the 

 plague to quit the place and return to Agen. Hia father now con- 

 tinued his education, and made him write every day a Latin essay on 

 some historical subject, by which exercise the youth became most 

 intimately acquainted with the Latin language. His father sometimes 

 also made him transcribe some of his own poetical compositions, which 

 seems to have inspired the youth with such a love of poetry, that at 

 the age of sixteen he attempted to write a tragedy on the story of 

 King (Edipus. After the death of his father, when he was nineteen 

 years of age, he went to Paris, where he devoted himself principally 

 to the study of Greek. At first he attended the lectures of Adrianus 

 Turnebus, but when he found that he might make more rapid pro- 

 gress by private study, he confined himself to his room and began 

 reading the Greek writers by himself. He commenced with Homer, 

 and in the course of two years which he spent in his seclusion from 

 the world he read nearly all the Greek authors both in verse and prose. 

 He also turned his attention to Oriental languages, which he likewise 

 learned by himself. 



Respecting the years which succeeded this period of intense study, 

 from about 1565 till 1593, we know very little of the life of Scaliger. 

 It must have been during this time that he left the Church of Rome 

 and became a Protestant, which was probably the reason why he did 

 not obtain any pubac appointment in France. In 1593 he was invited 

 to the chair of Belles-Lettres in the University of Leyden, where he 

 spent the remainder of his life, devoting himself entirely to the eluci- 

 .dation of antiquity. He was one of that constellation of great 

 scholars who are to this day remembered as the ornaments of the 

 University of Leyden. Among his numerous pupils was Hugo 

 Grotius, who enjoyed the especial friendship of Scaliger, and who 

 was entirely guided by him in his studies. Scaliger's life in Holland 

 presents scarcely any incidents, and we only know that, absorbed in 

 his studies, he paid so little attention to matters of ordinary life, that 

 he spent many days in his study without thinking of taking any food, 

 and that he was sometimes in a state of absolute poverty. Several per- 

 sons of distinction, who esteemed his talents and his learning, generously 

 offered to extricate him from, his difficulties, but his pride never 

 allowed him to accept any present. He was never married. He 

 seems to have inherited his father's character, for he was exceedingly 

 proud, and, like his father, he treated his literary opponents with the 

 most perfect contempt. He revived and defended the idle pretensions 

 of his father respecting the illustrious origin of his family, in a letter 

 addressed to Dausa, ' De Vetustate et Splendore Gentis Scaligeranse.' 

 This letter was directed against Scioppius, and was full of the bitterest 

 invectives against that scholar. Scaliger died of dropsy, on the 21st 

 of January 1609. 



As a critic Joseph Scaliger is pre-eminent, and there are very few 

 scholars who can be compared with him. Some of his works even 

 now excite our astonishment and admiration by the prodigious learn- 

 ing which they display, combined with an almost unparalleled acute- 

 ness and sagacity. Although in his verbal criticism and in his emen- 

 dations and conjectures he is often too bold and too capricious, yet all 

 that he has done bears the peculiar impress of his great genius, and 

 he scarcely ever exposes himself to the charge of inaccuracy, from 

 which his father was by no means free. 



The greatest among the numerous works of Joseph Scaliger is ' De 

 Emendatione Temporum,' fol., Paris, 1583. A corrected and much 

 improved edition of this work appeared at Geneva, fol., 1629. In 

 this work Scaliger, for the first time, explained the Julian period in a 

 satisfactory manner, and established a complete system of chronology 

 founded on sound principles. Several errors which were detected iu 

 the work by his contemporaries, were afterwards corrected by Scaliger 

 himself, in another work, entitled ' Thesaurus Temporum, complectens 

 Eusebii Pamphili Chronicon cum Isagogicis Chronologize Canonibus,' 

 the best edition of which is that published at Amsterdam, 2 vols fol., 

 1658. Among his other and less important works, there is a Latin 

 translation of two centuries of Arabian proverbs, published at Leyden, 

 1623; his 'Poemata,' 8vo, Leyden, 1615; and his ' Epistolae,' which 

 were edited by Daniel Heinsius, at Leyden, 8vo, 1637. His poems 

 have little merit, but his 'Epistles' are very instructive, and also 

 valuable for the literary history of his time. Scaliger also edited 

 many ancient authors with emendations and annotations, and there 

 are few ancient writers for whom he has not done something. His 

 commentary on Varro, ' De Lingua Latina,' was written when he was 

 twenty years of age ; it was published at Paris, 1565, and is reprinted 

 in the Bipont edition of Varro. His edition of Theocritus, ' Cum 

 Emendat. Jos. Scalig. et Is.. Casaub. Lect.,' appeared at Heidelberg, 

 8vo, 1596; 'M. Manilii Astronomicon,' 4to, Leyden, 1600; Catullus, 

 Tibullus, and Propertius, 8vo, Paris, 1577. He also made emenda- 

 tions and wrote commentaries on Seneca the dramatist, Ausonius, 

 Nonnus, Festus, and many other authors. 



SCALIGERI. [SCALA DELLA.] 



SCAMOZZI, VINCENZIO, was both a contemporary and fellow- 

 countryman of Palladio, having been born in 1552 at Viceuza, where 



