Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 1484-1558, Italian philologist and physician in France. Scaliger studied medicine and settled in France (1526), where he worked as a physician. A scholar of profound erudition, Scaliger was nevertheless contentious and arrogant and made many enemies, including Erasmus and Jerome Cardan. In his De causis linguae Latinae (1540), he analyzed Cicero's style, criticizing the earlier studies of his humanist predecessors. He wrote commentaries on the medical and botanical writings of Hippocrates, Theophrastus, and Aristotle and urged an improved classification of plants according to their unique characteristics. In his famous Poetics (1561, tr. 1905) he extolled Vergil and Seneca.

Julius Caesar: see Caesar, Julius.

(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.

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(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.

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(born July 12/13, 100, Rome—died March 15, 44 BC, Rome) Celebrated Roman general, statesman, and dictator. A patrician by birth, he held the prominent posts of quaestor and praetor before becoming governor of Farther Spain in 61–60. He formed the First Triumvirate with Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus in 60 and was elected consul in 59 and proconsul in Gaul and Illyria in 58. After conducting the Gallic Wars, during which he invaded Britain (55, 54) and crossed the Rhine (55, 53), he was instructed by the Senate to lay down his command, Senate conservatives having grown wary of his increasing power, as had a suspicious Pompey. When the Senate would not command Pompey to give up his command simultaneously, Caesar, against regulations, led his forces across the Rubicon River (49) between Gaul and Italy, precipitating the Roman Civil War. Pompey fled from Italy but was pursued and defeated by Caesar in 48; he then fled to Egypt, where he was murdered. Having followed Pompey to Egypt, Caesar became lover to Cleopatra and supported her militarily. He defeated Pompey's last supporters in 46–45. He was named dictator for life by the Romans. He was offered the crown (44) but refused it, knowing the Romans' dislike for kings. He was in the midst of launching a series of political and social reforms when he was assassinated in the Senate House on the ides of March by conspirators led by Cassius and Brutus. His writings on the Gallic and Civil wars are considered models of classical historiography.

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