Scaliger, Julius Caesar, and Scaliger, Joseph Justus

Scaliger, Julius Caesar, and Scaliger, Joseph Justus

(born April 23, 1484, Riva, Republic of Venice—died Oct. 21, 1558, Agen, France) (born Aug. 5, 1540, Agen, France—died Jan. 21, 1609, Leiden, Holland) Classical scholars. Julius worked in botany, zoology, and grammar but was chiefly interested in developing an understanding and critical evaluation of the ancients. His most widely read book was his Poetics (1561), in which Greco-Roman rhetoric and poetics are used as a foundation for literary criticism. His son Joseph, a precocious student of language, studied in France, Germany, and Italy and taught in France before he was called to the University of Leiden, where he became known as the most erudite scholar of his time. His major works are the Study on the Improvement of Time (1583) and Thesaurus of Time (1609), which brought order to ancient chronology.