CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY 



LATIN 1 



The Renaissance had its birth in Italy, and Italy 

 gives her name to the first period of classical scholarship. 

 To the second, France gives hers. If we set aside ERAS- 

 MUS, Dutch by birth, and LIPSIUS, Belgian, we may say 

 that by far the commanding figures in Latin philology 

 in the sixteenth century are the French scholars BUDE, 

 who was the first important worker in Roman law and 

 Roman coinage; Robert ESTIENNE, lexicographer and 

 editor; MURET, TURNEBE, and LAMBIN, critics and 

 editors; CASAUBON, editor, and founder of the study of 

 ancient life; PITHOU, editor, and active collector of 

 manuscripts; and SCALIGER the younger, the greatest 

 scholar of his time, critic, editor, epigraphist, numis- 

 matist, and chronologist. 



In the seventeenth century the lead was taken by 

 the English and the Dutch. Nevertheless, France 

 produced three notable scholars: SAUMAISE, text critic 

 and commentator; Du CANGE, lexicographer of medi- 

 aeval Latin; and MABILLON, who, at the instance of 

 the Benedictine order, set himself especially to the study 

 of the methods of determining the genuineness of manu- 

 scripts and their dates. From the resulting work, "De 

 Re Diploma tica," sprang the science of Latin palae- 

 ography. 



The love of Latin studies persisted in the eighteenth 

 century in France with undiminished vigor, but without 



1 [Drafting Committee: WM. GARDNER HALE, University of Chicago; 

 E. K. RAND, Harvard University. ED.] 



207 



