SCALIGERO, GIUSEPPE GIUSTO. - Philologist, b. at Agen on 4 Aug. 1540, d. at Leiden on 21 Jan. 1609. Son of the celebrated Giulio Cesare, he adhered to Calvinism (1562), fought with the Huguenots (1567-70); in 1572-74 he was professor at Geneva and from 1593 successor to J. Lipsius at the University of Leiden, which became the centre of classical philology.
A profound scholar of the classical and some Oriental languages, he published in critical editions many works by Latin and Greek writers (Varro, Festus, Ausonius, Theocritus, Bion, Moschus and the Catalepta of Virgil). With his De emendatione Temporum (Leiden 1583) he reconstructed ancient chronology on new and ample bases; in the work Thesaurus temporum (ibid. 1606) he published for the first time, from a Latin codex of the 7th-8th century (Bibl. nat. of Paris, Lat. 4384), the Liber genealogicus, a reworking of the Chronicle of Hippolytus. The incorrectness and barbarisms of the Latin language led scholars to designate the anonymous author of the Liber as Scaligeri Barbarus. In his writings he strayed into theological questions, treating them in an anti-Catholic sense, so that a number of theologians opposed him, especially Fr. D. Petau, who took aim at the De emendatione with his Doctrina temporum.