Lambīnus
Dionysius. The pseudo-classical form of Denys Lambin, one of the greatest of French scholars in the sixteenth
century. He was born at Montreuil-sur-Mer in 1516, and after lecturing and teaching for many
years in the provinces with much success, was called to Paris to take the chair of Greek
Literature in the Collège Royal. In this office he achieved a great reputation for
the soundness and accuracy of his scholarship, being, in fact, so noted for attention to
minute details that his opponents coined from his name the verb
lambiner, which is still retained in French to denote the work of a pedant. His chief
published works are the
Oratio de Recta Pronunciatione Linguae Graecae
(1568); emendations on Cicero (1577); a life of Cicero
(1578); and editions with notes of Horace (1561); Lucretius, his
magnum opus
(1564); Cicero, 4 vols. (1566); Nepos (1569);
Demosthenes (1570); and Plautus (1577). Lambinus died in 1572, it is
said of grief at the loss of his friend Ramus, who was killed in the affair of St.
Bartholomew's Day.
