82 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



learning were Gilberte and Jaqueline Pascal, of the cele- 

 brated convent of Port Royal; Marie-Eleonore de Rohan 

 and Gabrielle de Rochechouart, both, like the Pascal sisters, 

 inmates of the cloister ; Marie Cramoisy, wife of the first 

 director of the royal printing office, and Mile, de Luynes, 

 a friend of Pascal. All these counted among their attain- 

 ments a writing knowledge of Latin, but were far from 

 being able, like the Italian women above mentioned, to 

 speak it with the same fluency as they did their mother 

 tongue. 



In addition to the learned French women just named, 

 there was Elisabeth de Rochechouart, a niece of Mme. de 

 Montespan, who was able to read Plato in Greek, and Anne 

 de Rohan, Princess of Guemene, who surprised her country- 

 men by studying Hebrew. Then there were Mme. de Grig- 

 nan, Marie Dupre, Louise Serment, Anne de La Vigne, 

 who, like the Princess Palatine, Elisabeth, and Christine 

 of Sweden, were ardent disciples of Descartes, and took 

 the lead among the femmes philosophes of their time. 



But for profound and varied scholarship Mme. Dacier, 

 the daughter of the erudite Tanquil Le Fevre, was the 

 most famous of all the women of her time in France. Pos- 

 sessed of rare power of eloquence and beauty of style, to- 

 gether with an extraordinary capacity for criticism, there 

 was not a man in Europe who did not respect her judgment 

 in matters of literature and culture. But that for which 

 she was specially celebrated was her exceptional knowledge 

 of Latin and Greek. She not only translated the Iliad and 

 the Odyssey but also several other of the ancient classics. 

 None of her contemporaries had a more thorough mastery 

 of the tongues of Homer and Virgil, nor did any of her 

 countrymen contribute more than she toward the advance- 

 ment of the knowledge of the literature of ancient Greece 

 and Rome. So highly prized was her version of the Iliad 

 that it was translated by Ozell into English. Her version 

 of Plato's Phaedo was also translated into English and 



