Isaac CasaubonIsaac Casaubon (February 18, 1559 - July 1, 1614)
was a classical scholar, first in France then later in England,
regarded by many at the time as the most learned in Europe. He
was born in Geneva to French refugee parents. The family
returned to France with the publication of the Edict of Saint-
Germain in 1562, and settled at Crest in Dauphiné, where Arnaud
Casaubon, Isaac’s father, became minister of a Huguenot
congregation. Till he was nineteen, Isaac had no other
instruction than what could be given him by his father during
the years of civil war. Arnaud was away from home whole years
together in the Calvinist camp, or the family were flying to the
hills to hide from the fanatical bands of armed Catholics who
patrolled the country. Thus it was in a cave in the mountains of
Dauphiné, after the massacre of St Bartholomew, that Isaac
received his first lesson in Greek, the textbook being Isocrates
ad Demonicum. At nineteen Isaac was sent to the Academy of
Geneva, where he read Greek under Franci