Thesauri of Grævius and of Gronovius. 20. The two most industrious scholars of their time, Grævius and Gronovius, collected into one body such of the numerous treatises on Roman and Greek antiquities, as they thought most worthy of preservation in an uniform and accessible work. These form the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum by Grævius, in twelve volumes, the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum by Gronovius, in thirteen volumes; the former published in 1694, the first volumes of the latter in 1697. They comprehend many of the labours of the older antiquaries already commemorated from the middle of the sixteenth to that of the seventeenth century, and some also of a later date. Among these, in the collection of Grævius, are a treatise of Albert Rubens, son of the great painter, on the dress of the Romans, particularly the laticlave (Antwerp, 1665), the enlarged edition of Octavius Ferrarius on the same subject, several treatises by Spanheim and Ursatus, and the Roma Antica of Nardini, published in 1666. Gronovius gave a place in his twelfth volume (1702) to the very recent work of a young Englishman, Potter’s Antiquities, which the author, at the request of the veteran antiquary, had so much enlarged, that the Latin translation in Gronovius is nearly double in length the first edition of the English.[712] The warm eulogies of Gronovius attest the merit of this celebrated work. Potter was but twenty-three years of age; he had of course availed himself of the writings of Meursius, but he has also contributed to supercede them. It has been said that he is less exact in attending to the difference of times and places than our finer criticism requires.[713]
[712] The first edition of Potter’s Antiquities was published in 1697 and 1698.
[713] Biogr. Univ.
Fabretti. 21. Bellori, in a long list of antiquarian writings, Falconieri in several more, especially his Inscriptiones Athleticæ, maintained the honour of Italy in this province so justly claimed as her own.[714] But no one has been accounted equal to Raphael Fabretti, by judges so competent as Maffei, Gravina, Fabroni, and Visconti.[715] His diligence in collecting inscriptions was only surpassed by his sagacity in explaining them; and his authority has been preferred to that of any other antiquary.[716] His time was spent in delving among ruins and vaults to explore the subterranean treasures of Latium; no heat nor cold nor rain nor badness of road could deter him from these solitary peregrinations. Yet the glory of Fabretti must be partly shared with his horse. This wise and faithful animal, named Marco Polo, had acquired, it is said, the habit of standing still, and as it were pointing, when he came near an antiquity; his master candidly owning that several things which would have escaped him had been detected by the antiquarian quadruped.[717] Fabretti’s principal works are three dissertations on the Roman aqueducts, and on the Trajan column. Little, says Fabroni, was known before about the Roman galleys or their naval affairs in general.[718] Fabretti was the first who reduced lapidary remains into classes, and arranged them so as to illustrate each other; a method, says one of his most distinguished successors, which has laid the foundations of the science.[719] A profusion of collateral learning is mingled with the main stream of all his investigations.
[714] Salfi, vol. xi., 364.
[715] Fabretti’s life has been written by two very favourable biographers, Fabroni, in Vitæ Italorum, vol. vi., and Visconti, in the Biography Universelle.
[716] Fabroni, p. 187, Biogr. Univ.
[717] Fabroni, p. 192.
[718] P. 201.
[719] Biogr. Univ.