Isaac Casaubon

1559-1614. Classical scholar. Born at Geneva, the son of Huguenot* refugees, when the city was famous as a center of Greek scholarship, he studied under Francis Portus and succeeded him as professor of Greek in 1581. He went to Paris at the turn of the century and received a pension from Henry IV in return for duties in the royal library. On the king's death (1610), he resisted pressure to become a Roman Catholic, crossed to England, received a pension from James I, and was made a prebend of Canterbury (1611). He was employed to answer the historical defense of the papacy by Baronius,* and published various commentaries and critical editions, notably of Suetonius and Polybius.