GESNER, JOHANN MATTHIAS German classical scholar and schoolmaster, was born at Roth, near Ans bach, and died at Gottingen, where he had become professor of rhetoric. His special merit lies in the attention he devoted to the explanation and illustration of the subject matter of the classical authors.
His principal works are editions of the Scriptores rei rusticae, of Quintilian, Claudian, Pliny the Younger, Horace, and the Orphic poems (published after his death) ; Primae lineae isagoges in erudi tionem universalem (1756) ; an edition of B. Faber's Thesaurus erudi tionis scholasticae (1726), afterwards continued under title Novus linguae et eruditionis Romanae thesaurus (1749) ; Opuscula minora varii argumenti (1743-45) ; Thesaurus epistolicus Gesnerianus (ed. Klotz, 1768-7o) ; Index etymologicus latinitatis (1749) . See C. H. Pohnert, J. M. Gesner and sein Verhdltnis zum Philantheop˘inismus and Neuhumanismus (1898) ; and Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol., iii. 5-9 (1908).