- Pierre Henri Larcher
Pierre Henri Larcher (
October 12 ,1726 –December 22 ,1812 ) was a Frenchclassical scholar andarchaeologist .Born at
Dijon , and originally intended for thelaw , he abandoned it for the classics. His (anonymous) translation ofChariton 's "Callirhoe " (1763) marked him as an excellent Greek scholar. His attack uponVoltaire 's "Philosophie de l'historie " (published under the name of l'Abbé Bazin) created considerable interest at the time. His archaeological and mythological "Memoire sur Venus " (1775), which has been ranked with similar works of Heyne and Winckelmann, gained him admission to theAcademie des Inscriptions (1778).After the imperial university was founded, he was appointed professor of
Greek literature (1809) with Boissonade as his assistant.Larcher's best work was his translation of
Herodotus (1786, new ed. by L Humbert, 1880) on the preparation of which he had spent fifteen years. The translation itself, though correct, is dull, but the commentary (translated into English, London, 1829, new ed. 1844, byWD Cooley ) dealing with historical, geographical and chronological questions, and enriched by a wealth of illustration from ancient and modern authors, is not without value.References
*
Jean François Boissonade , "Notice sur la vie et les ecrits de P. L." (1813)
*Friedrich August Wolf , "Literarische Analecten", i. 205
*Daniel Albert Wyttenbach , "Philomathia", iii. (1817)
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.