PIERRE

See also:

• HENRI

HENRI

See also:

• PIERRE HENRI LARCHER (1726-1812)

LARCHER (1726-1812)  , French classical scholar and archaeologist, was born at Dijon on the 12th of October 1726 . Originally intended for the law, he abandoned it for the classics . His (anonymous) translation of Chariton's Chaereas and Callirriioe (1763) marked him as an excellent Greek scholar . His attack upon Voltaire's Philosophic de l'historie (published under the name of 1'Abbe Bazin) created considerable interest at the time . His archaeological and mythological Mentoire sur Venus (1775), which has been ranked with similar works of Heyne and Winckelmann, gained him admission to the Academie des Inscriptions (1778) . After the imperial university was founded, he was appointed professor of Greek literature (1809) with Boissonade as his assistant . He died on the 22nd of December 1812 . Larcher's best work was his translation of Herodotus (1786, new ed. by L . Humbert, 188o) 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, by W . D .

Cooley) dealing with

historical, geographical and chronological questions, and enriched by a wealth of illustration from ancient and modern authors, is not without value . See J . F . Boissonade, Notice sur in vie et les gaits de P . L . (1813); F . A . Wolf, Literarische Analecten, i . 205; D . A . Wyttenbach, Philomathia, iii . (1817) .