( Née Lefèvre) The wife of André Dacier, born at Saumur in 1651;
died 17 April 1720. She received the same instruction as her
brother and at the age of twenty-three published an edition of
fragments from the Alexandrian poet Callimachus (Paris, 1674).
She divided her time between translations (Anacreon and Sappho,
1681; several plays by Plautus and Aristophanes, 1683-1684;
Terence, 1688; Plutarch's "Lives" in her husband's translations,
"The Iliad", 1699, "The Odyssey", 1708) and the editions of the
collection Ad usum Delphini (Florus, 1674); Dictys and Dares,
1684, and Aurelius Victor, 1681). She had a certain vigour that
her husband lacked; "In intellectual productions common to
both," says an epigram used by Boileau, "she is the father." In
the notice of Dacier in the "Siècle de Louis XIV" Voltaire
declares: "Madame Dacier is one of the prodigies of the century
of Louis XIV ," However, she was no bluestocking and refused to
give her opinion in scholarly debates, agreeing with Sophocles
that "silence is the