2. Joseph Justus Scaliger (154o-16o9), the greatest scholar of his day, was the tenth child of J. C. Scaliger. Born at Agen in 154o, he was sent when twelve years of age, with two younger brothers, to the college of Guienne at Bordeaux. An outbreak of the plague in 1555 caused the boys to return home, and for the next few years Joseph was his father's constant companion and amanuensis. Julius daily dictated to his son from eighty to a hundred lines of Latin verse, and sometimes more. Joseph was also required each day to write a Latin theme or declamation, though in other respects he seems to have been left to his own devices. He learned from his father to be an acute observer, never losing sight of the actual world, and aiming not so much at cor recting texts as at laying the foundation of historical criticism.
After his father's death, he spent four years at the university of Paris, where he began the study of Greek under Turnebus. At the same time he taught himself. He read Homer in twenty-one days, and then went through all the other Greek poets, orators and his torians, forming a grammar for himself as he went along. From Greek, at the suggestion of G. Postel, he proceeded to attack Hebrew, and then Arabic ; of both he acquired a respectable knowl edge, though not the critical mastery which he possessed in Latin and Greek. In 1563 Jean Dorat recommended him to Louis de Chastaigner, the young lord of La Roche Pozay, as a companion in his travels. A close friendship sprang up between the two young men, which remained unbroken till the death of Louis in 1595. The travellers first went to Rome. Here they found Marc An toine Muretus, who had been a great favourite and occasional visitor of Julius Caesar at Agen. After visiting Italy, the travellers passed to England and Scotland. Scaliger formed an unfavourable opinion of the English. Their inhuman disposition, and inhos pitable treatment of foreigners especially impressed him. He was also disappointed in finding few Greek manuscripts and few learned men. It was not until much later that he became intimate with Richard Thompson and other Englishmen. In the course of his travels he had become a Protestant. In 1570 he proceeded to Valence to study jurisprudence under Cujas, the greatest living jurist. Here he remained three years.
The massacre of St. Bartholomew induced him to retire to Geneva, where he was appointed a professor in the academy. In 1574 he returned to France, and made his home for the next twenty years with Chastaigner. Of his life during this period we have interesting details and notices in the Lettres francaises inedites de Joseph Scaliger, edited by M. Tamizey de Larroque (Agen, 1880. During this period he published the books which
showed that with him a new school of historical criticism had arisen. In his editions of the Catalecta (1575), of Festus (1575), of Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius (1577), he was the first to lay down and apply sound rules of criticism and emendation, and to change textual criticism from a series of haphazard guesses into a "rational procedure subject to fixed laws" (Pattison). But it was reserved for his edition of Manilius (1579), and his De emendatione temporum (1583), to revolutionize all the received ideas of ancient chronology—to show that ancient history is not confined to that of the Greeks and Romans, and that the historical narratives and fragments of Persia, Babylonia, Egypt and Pales tine, and their several systems of chronology, must be critically compared, if any true and general conclusions are to be reached. It is this which places Scaliger immeasurably above any of his con temporaries. His commentary on Manilius is really a treatise on the astronomy of the ancients, and it forms an introduction to the De emendatione temporum, in which he examines by the light of modern and Copernican science the ancient system as applied to epochs, calendars and computations of time.
In the remaining twenty-four years of his life he at once cor rected and enlarged the basis which he had laid in the De emenda tione. With incredible patience, sometimes with a happy audacity of conjecture which itself is almost genius, he succeeded in recon structing the lost Chronicle of Eusebius—one of the most precious remains of antiquity, and of the highest value for ancient chronol ogy. This he printed in 1606 in his Thesaurus temporum, in which he collected, restored and arranged every chronological relic ex tant in Greek or Latin. When in 1590 Lipsius retired from Leyden, the university resolved to obtain Scaliger as his successor. He declined their offer. The next year it was renewed. It was made clear that lecturing would not be required of him, and he would be entirely his own master. About the middle of 1593 he started for Holland, where he passed the remaining thirteen years of his life. He was treated with the highest consideration. His rank as a prince of Verona was recognized. His literary dictatorship was unquestioned. From his throne at Leyden he ruled the learned world ; a word from him could make or mar a rising reputation ; and he was surrounded by young men eager to listen to and profit by his conversation. He encouraged Grotius when only a youth of sixteen to edit Capella; Daniel Heinsius, from being his favour ite pupil, became his most intimate friend.