Camerarius, Joachim
（
Kammermeister), born at Bamberg, April
12th, 1500, was next to Melanchthon among the scholars who contributed to reviving the study
of classical antiquities in Germany. His family, originally Liebhard, established itself towards the middle of the fifteenth century in Franconia,
and assumed the name of Camerarius from the hereditary office of chamberlain to the
Prince-Bishop of Bamberg. Joachim was first led to the study of the classics by George Helt,
at the University of Leipzig. In 1518, he went to Erfurt and began to teach Greek, and in 1521
joined Melanchthon at Wittenberg. He published a translation of the First Olynthiac of
Demosthenes in 1524, and, after worsting Erasmus at Bâle, was appointed in 1526
Professor of Greek at Nuremberg, and was sent in 1530 as delegate to Augsburg, where he took a
large part in the preparation of the Confession. In 1535 he was called to Tübingen,
where he founded the classical course, and after six years undertook with great success the
reorganization of the University of Leipzig, where he remained for the rest of his life. He
died in 1574. Camerarius was renowned not only as a great teacher, but especially as an
industrious editor. He was among the first to revise texts with scientific care, and left
nearly 150 works on varied subjects. Besides a number of biographies and books connected with
the Reformation, his chief work is his
Commentarii Linguae Graecae et
Latinae (Bâle, 1551). He also edited the orations of Demosthenes,
Sophocles
(1556), Quintilian
(1534), Cicero, 4 vols.
(1540), Herodotus, Thucydides, Plautus
(1552), Theocritus, the
Ethics of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and wrote a numismatical work,
Historia Rei Nummariae. See Bursian,
Geschichte der Class.
Philologie (Munich, 1883), pp. 185-190; and W. Pökel,
Philolog. Schriftstellerlexicon (Leipzig, 1882).
