Jean-Baptiste Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
He belonged to a noble family (De Ansso) of Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
origin, and took his surname from a village in the neighbourhood. In 1773 he published the Homeric Lexicon of Apollonius the Sophist
Apollonius the Sophist
Apollonius, also called "the Sophist", was a famous grammarian, who probably lived towards the end of the 1st century AD and taught in Rome in the time of Tiberius. He was born in Alexandria, the son of another grammarian, Archibius....
from a manuscript in the abbey of Saint Germain des Pres. In 1778 his edition of Longus
Longus
Longus, sometimes Longos , was the author of an ancient Greek novel or romance, Daphnis and Chloe. Very little is known of his life, and it is assumed that he lived on the isle of Lesbos during the 2nd century AD...
's Daphnis and Chloë was published. He went to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
in 1781 where he spent three years examining the library, his expenses being paid by the French government.
His chief discovery was a 10th century manuscript of the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
, the famous codex Venetus A
Venetus A
Venetus A is the more common [or original] name for the tenth century manuscript catalogued in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice as Codex Marcianus Graecus 454, now 822....
, with ancient scholia and marginal notes, indicating supposititious, corrupt or transposed verses. After leaving Venice, he accepted an invitation of the duke of Saxe-Weimar
Saxe-Weimar
Saxe-Weimar was one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty in present-day Thuringia. The chief town and capital was Weimar.-Division of Leipzig:...
to come to his court. Some of the fruits of his researches in the library of the palace were collected into a volume (Epistolae Vinarienses (1783)), dedicated to his royal hosts.
Hoping to find a treasure similar to the Venetian Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
in Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, he returned to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to prepare for a journey to the east. He visited Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, Smyrna
Izmir
Izmir is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.35 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey...
, the Greek islands, and Mount Athos
Mount Athos
Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in Macedonia, Greece. A World Heritage Site, it is home to 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and forms a self-governed monastic state within the sovereignty of the Hellenic Republic. Spiritually, Mount Athos comes under the direct jurisdiction of the...
; but the results did not meet his expectation. In 1786 he returned to Paris, and in 1788 brought out the Venetus A
Venetus A
Venetus A is the more common [or original] name for the tenth century manuscript catalogued in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice as Codex Marcianus Graecus 454, now 822....
of Homer, which created a sensation in the learned world. When the revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
broke out, being banished from Paris, he lived in retirement in Orléans
Orléans
-Prehistory and Roman:Cenabum was a Gallic stronghold, one of the principal towns of the Carnutes tribe where the Druids held their annual assembly. It was conquered and destroyed by Julius Caesar in 52 BC, then rebuilt under the Roman Empire...
, occupying himself chiefly with the transcription of the notes in the library of the brothers Valois
Henri Valois
Henri Valois or in classical circles, Henricus Valesius, was a philologist and a student of classical and ecclesiastical historians...
(Valesius).
On the restoration of order, having returned to Paris, he accepted a professorship of modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
established by the government, and held it until it was transferred to the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
as the professorship of the ancient and modern Greek language
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
s. He died soon after his appointment.
Another work of some importance, Anecdota Graeca (1781), from the Paris and Venice libraries, contains the Ionia (violet garden) of the empress Eudocia, and several fragments of the Neoplatonists Iamblichus and Porphyry
Porphyry (philosopher)
Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...
, Procopius of Gaza
Procopius of Gaza
Procopius of Gaza was a Christian sophist and rhetorician, one of the most important representatives of the famous school of his native place...
, Choricius
Choricius of Gaza
Choricius, of Gaza , Greek sophist and rhetorician, flourished in the time of Anastasius I .He was the pupil of Procopius of Gaza, who must be distinguished from Procopius of Caesarea, the historian. A number of his declamations and descriptive treatises have been preserved...
, and the Greek grammarians. Materials for an exhaustive work he was contemplating on ancient and modern Greece are preserved in the royal library of Paris.