History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age

Book excerpt: Taking up the story with the revival of classical studies inspired by Petrarch, Pfeiffer describes the achievements of the Italian humanists and the idependent movement in Holland that culminated in Erasmus and the German scholar-reformers. He traces the development of classical scholarship in the countries of Western Europe through the next 200 years, with particular attention to sixteenth-century France and eighteenth-century England, and concludes with an account of the new approach made by Winckelmann and his successors in Germany.