Prominent among those who attracted attention for their learning were Gilberte and Jaqueline Pascal, of the celebrated convent of Port Royal; Marie-Eleanore de Rohan and Gabrielle de Rochechouart, both, like the Pascal sisters, inmates of the cloister; Marie Cramoisy, wife of the first director of the royal printing office, and Mlle. de Luynes, a friend of Pascal. All these counted among their attainments a writing knowledge of Latin, but were far from being able, like the Italian women above mentioned, to speak it with the same fluency as they did their mother tongue. In addition to the learned French women just named, there was Elisabeth de Rochechouart, a niece of Mme. de Montespan, who was able to read Plato in Greek, and Anne de Rohan, Princess of Guemene, who surprised her countrymen by studying Hebrew. Then there were Mme. de Grignan, Marie Dupre, Louise Serment, Anne de La Vigne, who, like the Princess Palatine, Elisabeth, and Christine of Sweden, were ardent disciples of Descartes, and took the lead among the _femmes philosophes_ of their time. But for profound and varied scholarship Mme. Dacier, the daughter of the erudite Tanquil Le Fevre, was the most famous of all the women of her time in France. Possessed of rare power of eloquence and beauty of style, together with an extraordinary capacity for criticism, there was not a man in Europe who did not respect her judgment in matters of literature and culture. But that for which she was specially celebrated was her exceptional knowledge of Latin and Greek. She not only translated the Iliad and the Odyssey but also several other of the ancient classics. None of her contemporaries had a more thorough mastery of the tongues of Homer and Virgil, nor did any of her countrymen contribute more than she toward the advancement of the knowledge of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. So highly prized was her version of the Iliad that it was translated by Ozell into English. Her version of Plato's Phaedo was also translated into English and published by a New York bookseller more than a century after her death. The scholarly Menagius, in his _Historia Mulierum Philosopharum_, did not hesitate to pronounce her the most learned woman of all time--_Feminarum quot sunt, quot fuere doctissima_.[74]