Herman Tollius (28 February 1742, in

Breda Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...

– 29 April 1822, in

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...

) was a Dutch

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

. He studied

jurisprudence Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of legal reasoning a ...

in Leiden, earning his doctorate of law in 1763. From 1767 he served as a professor of

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

and Greek at the University of Harderwijk. Beginning in 1784 he was a private tutor to the children of

Stadtholder In the Low Countries, ''stadtholder'' ( nl, stadhouder ) was an office of steward, designated a medieval official and then a national leader. The ''stadtholder'' was the replacement of the duke or count of a province during the Burgundian and H ...

William V. In 1809 he was appointed professor of statistics and diplomacy at Leiden, where he later worked as a professor of Greek and

Latin language Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

s. Among his written efforts was an edition of Apollonius Sophista titled "Apollonii Sophistae Lexicon graecum Iliadis et Odysseae" (1788), and a work on constitutional writings involving events taking place in the United Netherlands in 1786/87, — ''Staatkundige geschriften, betreffende eenige gewigtige gebeurtenissenin de Vereendigde Nederlanden, gedurende de jaren MDCCLXXXVI, MDCCLXXXVII, en vervolgens''. His daughter Bartha produced a handful of

pastel A pastel () is an art medium in a variety of forms including a stick, a square a pebble or a pan of color; though other forms are possible; they consist of powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those use ...

portraits, including one of her father.Profile of Bartha Hermina Tollius
at the ''Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tollius, Herman 1742 births 1822 deaths People from Breda Academic staff of the University of Harderwijk Leiden University alumni Academic staff of Leiden University Dutch philologists 19th-century Dutch historians 18th-century Dutch historians