Pollux, Julius

, an ancient Greek grammarian, was born at Naucrates, a town in Egypt, in the year 180. Having been educated under the sophists, he became eminent in grammatical and critical learning taught rhetoric at Athens, and acquired so much reputation, that he was advanced to be preceptor of the emperor Commodus. He drew up for, and inscribed to this prince while his father Marcus Antoninus was living, an “Onomasticon, or Greek Vocabulary,” divided into ten books. It is still extant, and contains a vast variety of synonymous words and phrases, agreeably to the copiousness of the Greek language, ranged under the general classes of things. The first edition of the “Onomasticon” was published at Venice by Aldus in 1502, and a Latin version was added in the edition of 1608, by Seberus; but there was.no correct and handsome edition of it, till that of Amsterdam, 1706, in folio, by Lederlin and Hemsterhuis. Lederlin went through the first seven books, correcting the text and version, and subjoining his own, with the notes of Salmasius, Is. Vossius, Valesius, and of Kuhnius, whose scholar he had been, and whom he succeeded in the professorship of the Oriental languages in the university of Strasburgh. Hemsterhuis continued the same method through the three last books. Pollux died in the year 238. He is said to have written many other works, none of which are come down to us but there was another of the same name, who is supposed to have flourished about the end of the fourth century, and wrote “Historia physica, seu chronicon ab origine mundi ad Valentis tempora.” Of this Bianconi published the first edition at Bonon. 1779, fol. and Ignatius Hardt, a second in 1792, 8vo, without knowing of the preceding. ²