FABRICIUS

fabricius, georg (1516-1571), german poet, historian and archaeologist, was born at chemnitz in upper saxony on the 23rd of april 1516, and educated at leipzig. travelling in italy with one of his pupils, he made an exhaustive study of the antiquities of rome. he published the results in his _roma_ (1550), in which the correspondence between every discoverable relic of the old city and the references to them in ancient literature was traced in detail. in 1546 he was appointed rector of the college of meissen, where he died on the 17th of july 1571. in his sacred poems he affected to avoid every word with the slightest savour of paganism; and he blamed the poets for their allusions to pagan divinities. principal works: editions of terence (1548) and virgil (1551); _poematum sacrorum libri xxv._ (1560); _poetarum veterum ecclesiasticorum opera christiana_ (1562); _de re poetica libri septem_ (1565); _rerum misnicarum libri septem_ (1569); (posthumous) _originum illustrissimae stirpis saxonicae libri septem_ (1597); _rerum germaniae magnae et saxoniae universae memorabilium mirabiliumque volumina duo_ (1609). a life of georg fabricius was published in 1839 by d.c.w. baumgarten-crusius, who in 1845 also issued an edition of fabricius's _epistolae ad w. meurerum et alios aequales_, with a short sketch _de vita ge. fabricii et de gente fabriciorum_; see also f. wachter in ersch and gruber's _allgemeine encyclopadie_.