Scaliger, Joseph Justus (1540-1609)

French scholar. He revolutionized the study of ancient chronology in his editions of Manilius (1579) and Opus De Emendatione Temporum (1583), and reconstructed the lost Chronicle of Eusebius (1606).

Scaliger was born in Agen, southwest France, son of the scholar and soldier Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558) who had been a Ciceronian critic of Erasmus. Under his father's tuition, he became a master of Latin and of textual and historical criticism. He was a professor at Geneva 1572-74 and Leiden from 1593, and edited many classical texts. He also fought for the Huguenots during the French Wars of Religion.