Ezechiel, a very learned writer, was born at Geneva on the 7th of December 1629. His father, Frederic Spanheim, a distinguished theologian, was successively professor of divinity at Geneva and Leyden. The son accompanied him to the latter university, and there distinguished himself by his proficiency in solid learning. His early reputation procured him the professorship of eloquence at Geneva. He took possession of this chair in 1651; but he only retained it for a few months, the elector palatine Charles Louis having appointed him tutor to his only son. This task he discharged to the entire satisfaction of the elector, by whom he was also employed in divers negotiations at foreign courts. In 1677 he entered into the service of the Elector of Brandenburg, who in 1680 sent him as envoy extraordinary to the court of France, and soon after made him a minister of state. After the peace of Ryswick, he was again sent on an embassy to France, where he continued from the year 1697 to 1702. The Elector of Brandenburg having during that interval assumed the title of King of Prussia, conferred on him the title and dignity of a baron. In 1702 he left France, and was sent as ambassador to England, which he had previously visited on more than one occasion. He died in London on the 7th of November 1710, at the age of eighty-one. It is surprising, that in discharging the duties of a public minister with so much exactness, and amidst so many different journeys, he could find sufficient time to write the various books which he published. It may be said of him, that he acquitted himself in his negotiations like a person who had nothing else in his thoughts; and that he wrote like a man who had spent his whole time in his study. His works display a very profound and variegated erudition. The most elaborate of them is entitled, Dissertationes de Prostantia et Usu Numismatum antiquorum, first printed at Rome in quarto in the year 1664. The best edition, extending to two volumes folio, was printed at London in 1706-17. Another valuable work is his Orbis Romanus, of which the best edition is that of London, 1704, 4to. He translated the Caesars of Julian into French, and illustrated them with annotations. He likewise contributed notes on Aristophanes, Callimachus, and some other Greek writers, of whom he did not himself publish editions.