Stephanus
- a Grecian sculptor, Plin. 36, 5, 4, § 33.
the Latinized form of Estienne, in English sometimes absurdly called Stephens. The name of a celebrated family of printers, publishers, and classical scholars (descended from a noble Provençal family), found settled at Paris towards 1500 in the person of Henry, who is supposed to have been born about 1470, and died in 1520. In Paris Henry carried on the business of printer and bookseller for upwards of twenty years. In 1526 Robert, his second son, born 1503, is found in possession of the business. Every year of Robert's life is marked by the issue from his printing-press of several volumes, many of them masterpieces of art, and all of them surpassing anything of the kind previously seen in France. He was at once printer, publisher, commentator, and author. In 1532 he published a Latin dictionary (Thesaurus Linguae Latinae) which for two centuries remained the standard work. He also published editions of several classical authors and numerous Latin grammars. His Bible of 1545, and his Greek Testament of 1549, each drew down upon him a religious prosecution; and though the prosecutions failed legally, they were disastrous to his private fortune. Having first sent his family to Geneva, he followed them there in 1549. Robert, his second son, shortly afterwards returned to Paris, where he resumed his father's business.
The second Henry, born at Paris in 1528, succeeded his father, Robert, on his death in 1559. Though Henry possessed the same literary industry and ability as his father, he was unfortunately deficient in his father's practical turn of mind. Devoted to his art and to his calling, he seems to have been utterly wanting in worldly prudence. In two years we find that he had revised and published more than 4000 pages of Greek text, including some twenty editiones principes; while at the same time he was writing his Apologia pro Herodoto (1566)—a work of formidable length and learning. Rendered nervous and irritable by an overworked brain, and by pecuniary difficulties, travelling, originally undertaken from literary curiosity, grew into a necessity of his life, and he visited England, the Netherlands, and Italy, examining classical manuscripts and making the acquaintance of distinguished scholars. In 1572 appeared his great Greek lexicon (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae), in five folio volumes, on which he spent nearly his whole fortune (last reprint by Didot, 9 vols. [Paris, 1831- 65]). In 1578 he visited Paris, where for several years he became a hanger-on of the court of Henry III., who bestowed upon him a pension, which the state of the royal exchequer rendered merely nominal. Quitting Paris, he wandered in poverty over Europe, his own family often ignorant of where he was to be found. He died at Lyons in 1598. Great as a publisher and commentator, Henry Estienne does not seem to have possessed much power as an original thinker, but his mastery of Greek seems to have been almost complete, and as a critic of the French language he is still esteemed in France. The traditions of the family were kept up by Paul (1566-1627) and Antoine (1592-1674). See Feugère, Caractères et Portraits Littéraires du XVI. Siècle (Paris, 1864); also article in Quarterly Review (London, April, 1865); Bernard, Les Estiennes (Paris, 1856); Renouard, L'Imprimerie des Étiennes (Paris, 1843); and the paper in Pattison's Essays (Oxford, 1889).
(Στέφανος). (1) An Athenian comic poet of the New Comedy, probably the son of Antiphanes, some of whose plays he is said to have exhibited.
(2) Of Byzantium, the author of the geographical lexicon entitled Ethnica (Ἐθνικά), of which unfortunately we only possess an epitome. Stephanus was a grammarian at Constantinople, and lived after the time of Arcadius and Honorius, and before that of Justinian II. His work was reduced to an epitome by a certain Hermolaüs, who dedicated his abridgment to the emperor Justinian II. According to the title, the chief object of the work was to specify the gentile names derived from the several names of places and countries in the ancient world. But, while this is done in every article, the amount of information given went far beyond this. Nearly every article in the epitome contains a reference to some ancient writer, as an authority for the name of the place; but in the original, as we see from the extant fragments, there were considerable quotations from the ancient authors, besides a number of very interesting particulars, topographical, historical, mythological, and others. Thus the work was not merely what it professed to be, a lexicon of a special branch of technical grammar, but a valuable dictionary of geography. How great would have been its value to us, if it had come down to us unmutilated, may be seen by any one who compares the extant fragments of the original with the corresponding articles in the epitome. These fragments, however, are unfortunately very scanty. The best editions of the epitome of Stephanus are by Dindorf, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1825); Westermann (Leipzig, 1839); and Meineke (Berlin, 1849). See Geffcken, De Stephano Byzantio (1886).