Jean-Antoine Letronne

His father, a poor engraver, sent him to study art under the painter David, but his own tastes were literary, and he became a student in the Collège de France, where it is said he used to exercise his already strongly developed critical faculty by correcting old translations of Greek authors and afterwards comparing the results with the latest and most approved editions.

[1] From 1810 to 1812 he travelled in France, Switzerland and Italy, and on his return to Paris published a paper entitled Essai critique sur la topographie de Syracuse, designed to elucidate Thucydides.

In 1815 he was commissioned by government to complete the translation of Strabo which had been begun by François-Jean-Gabriel de La Porte du Theil, and in March 1816 he was one of those who were admitted to the Academy of Inscriptions by royal ordinance, having previously contributed On the Metrical System of the Egyptians.

[2] Further promotion came rapidly: in 1817 he was appointed director of the École Nationale des Chartes, in 1829 inspector-general of the university, and in 1831 professor of history in the Collège de France.

The most important work of Letronne is the Recueil des inscriptions grecques et latines de l'Égypte, of which the first volume appeared in 1842, and the second in 1848.