Joseph Justus Scaliger

Joseph Justus Scaliger (/ˈskælədʒər/; 5 August 1540 – 21 January 1609) was a French religious leader and scholar, known for expanding the notion of classical history from Greek and ancient Roman history to include Persian, Babylonian, Jewish and ancient Egyptian history. He spent the end of his life in the Netherlands.

He was born at Agen, the tenth child and third son of Italian scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger and Andiette de Roques Lobejac. When he was twelve years old, he was sent with two younger brothers to the College of Guienne in Bordeaux, which was then under the direction of Jean Gelida. 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.

The composition of Latin verse was the chief amusement of his father Julius in his later years, and he would daily dictate to his son between eighty and a hundred lines, and sometimes even 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 not only a scholar, but also an acute observer, aiming at historical criticism more than at correcting texts.

After his father's death he spent four years at the University of Paris, where he began the study of Greek under Adrianus Turnebus. But after two months he found he was not in a position to profit from the lectures of the greatest Greek scholar of the time. He read Homer in twenty-one days, and then went through all the other Greek poets, orators and historians, forming a grammar for himself as he went along. From Greek, at the suggestion of Guillaume Postel, he proceeded to attack Hebrew, and then Arabic; of both he acquired a respectable knowledge.

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