All Scholars

Johann Gräve (Graevius) was born to a wealthy family who sent him to the best gymnasium in Germany, Schulpforte, the school that would number Johann Ernesti, Otto Jahn, and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff among its pupils.  

At Leiden he studied under the great scholar of the Dutch Renaissance Daniel Heinsius (1580-1655). When his father dispatched him to collect debts in East Frisia, Gräve managed a side trip to The Netherlands where he met the renowned professor of history and rhetoric at Deventer, Johann Friedrich Gronow (Gronovius) (1611-71), whose range of knowledge induced Gräve to remain in Deventer, where he gave up the law and intended to complete his education by studying classical philology under Gronow. He subsequently moved to Amsterdam where he studied under the controversial theologian Alexander More (1616-70) and the ancient historian David Blondel (1591-1655), who inspired Gräve’s move to abandon his Lutheran background and join the Dutch Reformed Church. 

      Following the departure of Johann Schulting for Nijmegen in 1656, Gräve was named to the chair of eloquence at Alten Universität Duisburg. In 1658 Gronow moved to Leiden and successfully supported Gräve as his successor at Deventer. In 1661, he was appointed Professor of Eloquence at the young (1636) Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, where he would remain for the rest of his career. His renown as a teacher brought him many sons of the nobility, particularly Johann Wilhelm Friso (1687-1711), cousin of William III (1650-1702), the Stadtholder (head of the Dutch state), soon to be William of Orange. William named Gräve his official historian and Gräve in turn wrote a biography of William’s wife. Mary Stuart. 

       Gräve took pride in his widely admired teaching and in his formative role in the reputation of Utrecht. Despite numerous offers of appointment at more prestigious universities outside the Netherlands, he remained at Utrecht. He was a distinguished Latin orator whose speeches on official occasions (particularly funerals) were collected in Leiden and published in 1717. His 46-year marriage produced 18 children, 14 of whom predeceased him. A generous man, his motto was vis amari, ama (If you wish to be loved, love.). Gräve maintained a regular correspondence with scholars across Britain and Europe. When Gräve completed the edition of the epigrams and fragments of Callimachus begun by his short-lived son, Theodorus Georgius (1669-92), his friend Richard Bentley (1662-1742), with whom Gräve corresponded from 1692 to his death, contributed a collection of over 400 fragments and notes.

        Gräve was a prolific publisher best known for collecting the works of others and for introducing these new works to others. He gathered the works of earlier scholars in the vast Thesaurus antiquitatum Romanarum, the best collection of early treatises by various hands on aspects of antiquity. He followed this with a Thesaurus antiquitatum et historiarum Italiae, expanded and completed by his former student and colleague Peter Burman the Elder (1668-1741). His numerous texts were better known for their notes (particularly on Hesiod and Cicero) than for introducing new material or critical methods. He leaned toward Latin prose authors, particularly Gronow’s admired Cicero and historians. In the custom of the time, he noted the predecessors whose texts he built his own upon, for example, his Hesiod was based on Scaliger’s text, Justin (based on Matthias Bernegger, Jacques Bongars, Isaac Vossius, Antoine Thysius), Suetonius (Théodor Marcile & Isaac Casaubon). 

       He introduced the work of a number of scholars not only to the Dutch world but to others. Chief among them was Bentley, whose Epistle to Mill (1691) Gräve greatly admired. Knowledge of Bentley’s methods created a new enthusiasm among the Dutch for textual criticism. Gräve was the first to publish the Leiden Hellenist Johannes Meursius’s (1579-1639) works on Greek antiquities, he edited the second edition of Jan Gruter’s (1560-1627) Inscriptiones Atticae totius orbis Romanae (1603), the letters of J. Casaubon (1656), and the Latin and Greek poems of P. Dan. Huet (1694), all with prefaces and extensive literary-historical notes. Gräve did not complete his edition of all Cicero’s works, but his Cicero was readily translated into French and was widely used.