All Scholars

Charles Graux was introduced to palaeography by the Hellenist Édouard Tournier (1831–1899) and to comparative grammar by Michel Bréal (1832-1915). His ability and knowledge in finding, deciphering, and copying manuscripts were evident to those who gave him the editorship of two journals at the age of 21 and arranged for the French government to pay for extensive trips to Europe to examine manuscripts. He visited Sweden and Denmark, leading to one of his first publications, the manuscript collection of the Royal Library in Copenhagen (1879). He traveled to Portugal and in Spain, after recording the contents of over 60 libraries, he wrote a history of the founding of the manuscripts department of the Escurial. The Royal Library furnished a manuscript of selected Lives of Plutarch on which Graux based his 1881 dissertation (in Fine Arts). In all he made available to the scholarly world over 450 manuscripts. For these discoveries and their contribution to Spanish scholarship, Graux was granted an audience with King Alfonso XII who allowed him to borrow a number of valuable manuscripts for his inspection. 

      Since many manuscripts were written on expensive parchment or other materials, prose and poetic texts were written chockablock with no indication of line lines or verses which were the bases of composition. From the beginning of his work with manuscripts Graux was concerned with stichometry, which is the practice of evaluating the lengths of literary works in lines. Lines of Poetic works can be revealed through scansion, but in his 1879 article, he noted that for prose works there was a normal line length: “On l'avait prise de même grandeur qu'un vers homérique de longueur Moyenne” (“It was taken to be the same size as a Homeric verse of average length”), i.e., the equivalent of a six-metron line. Though it was thought to have been an Alexandrian-era concept, Graux’s work with manuscripts of the 4^th to 6^th centuries CE show the practice to have existed at least as early as the 4^th century BCE.

         With the completion of his dissertation Graux was put in charge of establishing the department of Greek History and Antiquities at the Sorbonne. Before his first class, he traveled to Florence and then to Rome to assist those who were cataloguing the Vatican’s manuscript collection. He likely contracted typhus in Italy and upon his return to Paris in January delayed his first lecture because of his health. He never gave the lecture and died at the age of 29.

         The death of one with such ability and promise shocked the scholarly world. An extraordinary memorial Festschriftwas prepared with contributions from 78 of the most eminent European scholars. His numerous papers including his critical editions of Xenoophon and Plutarch were posthumously gathered and published.