Isaac Casaubon - Legacy

Legacy

Besides the editions already mentioned, Casaubon published and commented upon Persius, Suetonius, Aeschylus, and the Scriptores Historiae Augustae. The edition of Polybius, on which he had spent vast labour, he left unfinished. His most ambitious work was his revision of the text of the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus, with commentary. The Theophrastus perhaps exhibits his most characteristic excellences as a commentator. The Exercitationes in Baronium are but a fragment of the massive criticism which he contemplated; it failed in presenting the uncritical character of Baronius's history, and had only a moderate success, even among Protestants. His analysis of the Corpus Hermeticum overturned the previous general opinion in Europe that these texts dated from almost the time of Moses by locating them between 200 and 300 AD. His correspondence (in Latin) was finally collected by Theodorus Janssonius van Almeloveen (Rotterdam, 1709), who prefixed to the letters a careful biography of Casaubon. But this learned Dutch editor was acquainted with Casaubon's diary only in extract. This diary, Ephemerides, whose manuscript is preserved in the chapter library of Canterbury, was printed in 1850 by the Clarendon Press. It forms the most valuable record we possess of the daily life of a scholar, or man of letters, of the 16th century.

His son Méric Casaubon was also a classical scholar.