OLIVIER, CLAUDE MATTHEU, advocate of the parliament of Aix, was born at Marseilles, in 1701. He had a principal share in the establishment of the academy of Marseilles, and was one of its original members. He practised at the bar with considerable success; and a few hours' retirement from society and from his pleasures were frequently sufficient to enable him to speak and write, even upon important causes. But his works commonly bore marks of great haste. Addicted to excess in every thing, he would employ a fortnight in studying the Code and the Digest, or in storing his mind with the beauties of Demosthenes, Homer, Cicero, and Bossuet; and would then abandon himself for another fortnight, frequently for a whole month, to a life of frivolity and dissipation. He died in 1736, at the age of thirty-five. Olivier published, 1. L'Histoire de Philippe Roi de Macedoine, et Père d'Alexandre le Grand, 2 vols. 12mo; 2. Mémoire sur les Secours donnés aux Romains par les Marseillois pendant la Seconde Guerre Punique; 3. Mémoire sur les Secours donnés aux Romains par les Marseillois durant la Guerre contre les Gaulois.