Gronovius
（Gronov). The name of three distinguished Dutch classical
scholars.
1.
Johann Friedrich, born at Hamburg, September 20th, 1613. He
studied at Bremen and at the Universities of Leipzig, Jena, and Altdorf, after which he spent
some time in travel in both France and Italy. In 1643 he became Professor of Rhetoric and
History at Deventer in the Netherlands, and in 1658 succeeded Daniel Heinsius, at Leyden, as
Professor of Greek. He died at Leyden, December 28th, 1671.
He edited, with commentaries, Statius
(1653), Plautus
(1664),
Livy
(1645), Pliny the Elder
(1669), Tacitus
(1672),
the tragedies of Seneca
(1661), and published separately various notes upon
Phaedrus, Seneca, and other authors, these being subsequently incorporated with the works of
his more distinguished son. A valuable contribution to the study of numismatics is the
treatise
De Sestertiis, in four books, which appeared in 1643.
2.
Jakob, son of the preceding, born at Deventer, October 20th,
1645. He early distinguished himself at Leyden, and in 1668 visited England, where he became
intimate with Casaubon, Pocock, and Pearson. While in England he spent several months in
collating a number of rare MSS. at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Soon after he
declined a professorship at Deventer, and in 1671 visited France, where he made the
acquaintance of some of the greatest scholars of that country. In the following year he
travelled in Spain and Italy, accepting in the latter country a chair in the University of
Pisa offered him by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Resigning this at the end of two years, he
returned to Leyden, where he soon after accepted the professorship, which he held to the end
of his life, declining several calls from foreign universities, and passing his time in
congenial work, though often embroiled in literary quarrels, in which he sustained his part
with extreme violence of temper and a remarkable power of vituperative scurrility. He died
October 21st, 1716.
His most important work is his
Thesaurus Antiquitatum Graecarum, in thirteen
vols. folio
(Leyden, 1698-1702), reprinted at Venice
(1732-37)—a work modelled on the great
Thesaurus Antiquitatum
Romanarum of
Graevius (q.v.). He also
brought out new editions of the authors edited by his father, and himself edited and
annotated Macrobius
(1670), Polybius
(1670), Tacitus
(1721), Cicero
(1691), Ammianus Marcellinus
(1709),
Minucius Felix
(1707), Gellius
(1706), Herodotus
(1715), Cebes
(1689), the poems ascribed to Manetho, the
Dactylotheca of Gorlaeus, the
Lexicon of Harpocration, besides
publishing a great number of pamphlets, theses, discourses, etc.
3.
Abraham, son of the preceding, was born at Leyden in 1694, and
died there in 1775. He was for a long time librarian to the University, and is known by his
editions of Iustinus
(1719), Tacitus
(with his father, 1721), and
Mela
(1722).
