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, a rhetorician, born at Elaea, about the year 420 B. C. was contemporary with Isocrates, and the disciple of Gorgias. He composed a work on rhetoric, quoted by Plutarch; another in praise of death, mentioned by Cicero and Menander, and other works, noticed by Athenseus and Diogenes Laertius. There are only now extant two orations, one of Ulysses against Palamedes: the other, a declamation against the rhetoricians of his time, Περι Σοφιστων. They are both in Reiske’s collection, vol. VIII. The abbé Auger translated them along with his Isocrates.

, an eminent poet of the fourth century, was the son of a physician, and born at Itourdeaux. Great care was taken of his eJucation, the whole family interesting themselves in it, either because his genius was very promising, or that the scheme of his nativity, which had been cast by his grandfather on the mother’s side, led them to imagine that he would rise to great honour. Whatever their motive, it is allowed that he made an uncommon progress in classical learning, and at the age of thirty was chosen to teach grammar at Bourdeaux, He was promoted some time after to be professor of rhetoric, in which office he acquired so great a reputation, that he ivas sent for to court to be preceptor to Gratian the emperor Valentinian’s son. The rewards and honours conferred on him for the faithful discharge of his office remind us of Juvenal’s maxim, that when fortune pleases she can liaise a man from a rhetorician to a consul. He was actually appointed consul by the emperor Gratian, in the year 379, after having filled other considerable posts; for, besides the dignity of questor, to which he had been nominated by Valentinian, he was made prefect of the pnetorium in Italy and Gaul after that prince’s death. His speech returning thanks to Gratian on his promotion to the consulship is highly commended. The time of his death is uncertain he was living in 392, and lived to a great age. He hud several children by his wife, who died young. The emperor Thcodosius had a great esteem for Ausonius, and pressed him to publish his poems. There is a great inequality in his productions; and in his style there is a harshness, which was perhaps rather the defect of the times Le lived in, than of his genius. Had he lived in Augustus’s reign, his verses, according to good judges, would have equalled the most finished of that age. He is generally supposed to have been a Christian some ingenious authors indeed have thought otherwise, and the indecency of many of his poems make us not very anxious to claim him. The editio princeps of his works was published at Venice, 1472, fol. of which there are four copies in this country, in the libraries of his majesty, the museum, earl Spencer, and Mr. Wodhull. De Bure was not able to find one in France. The two best editions, the first yery uncommon, are those of Amsterdam, 1671, 8yo, and Bipont, 1785, 8vo.

, of Aphrodisium, secretary to a rhetorician named Athenagoras, lived at the end of the fourth century, if these are not fictitious names, which there is great reason to think. A Greek romance, in his style, was some years ago found, entitled “The Loves of Chsereas and Callirhoe,” an edition of which was published by M. d‘Orville, professor of history at Amsterdam, 1750, 4to, with a Latin translation and notes. A French translation appeared at Paris, 1763, 2 vols. 8vo, and M. Fallet published a new one, 1775, 8vo. Gesner, Fabricius, and M. Huet, had spoken of this romance as being only known by name. It is a very amusing composition, and the notes of D’Orville contain a treasure of critical learning. They were adopted afterwards by "Reiske in his edition of Leipsic, 1783, 8vo, and the novel was translated into English, 1763, 2 vols. 12mo, with a preface giving all the account that is known of the author.

In 1541, Henry VIII. granted him, by patent, the office of master of the grammar-school of Reading, with a certain tenement called “a scole-house,” with a stipend of ten pounds, issuing out of the manor of Cholsey, belonging to the late dissolved monastery of Reading. A few years after he had obtained this patent, which he appears, to have had the power of assigning during his life, he quitted Reading, and travelled over great part of the continent, teaching the learned languages. Leland, in some Latin verses, among his “Encomia,” addressed to Cox, speaks of his visiting the universities of Prague, Paris, and Cracow, and that he was known to Melancthon, who was Greek professor at Wittemberg. In the latter part of his life he kept a school at Caer-leon, and is said to have survived until the reign of Edward VI. Bale says that he was instructed in all the liberal arts, that he was a grammarian, a rhetorician, and a poet; a sound divine, and a diligent preacher of God’s word. It is needless after this to add that he was of the reformed religion. In Edward Vlth’s time, he was one of the licensed preachers.

, a Greek author, was born at Samosata, the capital of Comagene; the time of his birth is uncertain, though generally fixed in the reign of the emperor Trajan; but Mr. Moyle, who has taken some pains to adjust the age of Lucian, fixes the fortieth year of his age to the 164th year of Christ, and the fourth of Marcus Antoninus; and consequently, his birth to the 124th year of Christ, and the eighth of Adrian. His birth was mean; and his father, not being able to give him any learning, resolved to breed him a sculptor, and in that view put him apprentice to his brother-in-law; but, taking a dislike to the business, he applied himself to the study of polite learning and philosophy; being encouraged by a dream, which he relates in the beginning of his works, and which evidently was the product of his inclination to letters. He tells us also himself, that he studied the law, and practised some time as an advocate; but disliking the wrangling oratory of the bar, he threw off his gown, and took up that of a rhetorician. In this character he settled first at Antioch; and passing thence into Ionia in Greece, he travelled into Gaul and Italy, and returned at length into his own country by the way of Macedonia. He lived four and twenty years after the death of Trajan, and even to the time of Marcus Aurelius, who made him register of Alexandria in Egypt. He tells us himself, that when he entered upon this office, he was in extreme old age, and had one leg in Charon’s boat. Suidas asserts that he was torn to pieces by dogs. He died, however, in the year 214, aged 90.

As Lucian made a figure in various employments, his works exhibit him sometimes as a rhetorician and panegyrist; in others he is distinguished chiefly as a pleader; in a few he assumes a more serious tone, and reasons on the subject before him in a vein of manly sense, united to deep observation and knowledge of mankind. Of far the greater part of his " Dialogues/' however, the leading and prominent feature is ridicule, in dispensing which he is so often guilty of obscenity and impiety, that moralists in all ages have united in condemning him. In this country he has, notwithstanding, found many translators, Spence, Mayne, Hickes, Carr, and Francklin, who have doubtless bespoke attention to his wit by omitting the objectionable passages. The best editions of the original, which was first printed in 1496, at Florence, are those of Bourdelot, Paris, 1615, folio; of Grevius, Amst 1687, 2 vols. 8vo; of Hemsterhusius, ibid. 1743, 4 vols. 4 to, edit. opt. which has been followed by all subsequent editors.

He was, says Warton, who of all our modern critics has considered him with most attention, a monk of the Benedictine abbey of Bury in Suffolk. After a short education at Oxford, he travelled into France and Italy; and returned a complete master of the language and the literature of both countries. He chiefly studied the Italian and French poets, particularly Dante, Boccaccio, and Alain Chartier; and became so distinguished a proficient in polite learning, that he opened a school in his monastery, for teaching the sons of the nobility the arts of versification, and the elegancies of composition. Yet, although philology was his object, he was not unfamiliar with the fashionable philosophy: he was not only a poet and a rhetorician, but a geometrician, an astronomer, a theologist, and a disputant. Mr. Warton is of opinion that he made considerable additions to those amplifications of our language, in which Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve, led the way; and that be is the first of our writers whose style is clothed wjth that perspicuity in which the English phraseology appears at this day to an English reader.

, a learned German, was descended from a family, which came originally from Schlestadt, and had been raised to nobility in the person of his great-grandfather by the emperor Rodolphus II. in 1604. Ulric was born, July 23, 1646, at Strasburg, where he had the first part of his education, and then proceeded to study the sciences at Montbelliard and Altorf. He inherited both the inclination and taste of his ancestors, who were all distinguished by the posts they held, either in the university, or in the senate of Strasburg. The study of the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues was almost the first amusement of his infancy; and he learned, with equal facility, French, Spanish, and Italian. At fifteen^ he was so good a rhetorician, that he composed and pronounced a Latin speech in public, with universal applause. The method prescribed by his preceptors was, to suffer him to read only the ancient authors, and to derive the principles of eloquence from the purest sources, Demosthenes, Cicero, Quintilian, Longinus, &c. He also pursued the same plan, in his course of philosophy; Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras, being principally recommended to him. His general knowledge at length settled in jurisprudence and history: in both which he excelled, and filled the chairs of both in the university with great distinction, being admired, not more for the great extent of his knowledge, than for his perspicuity in communicating it. He gave an account of all ages as if he had lived in them; and of all laws as if he had been the maker of them. With all this, he spoke of such subjects as he knew best, like a man who sought rather to be informed than to decide. As soon as he had taken his licentiate’s degree, he resolved to travel for farther improvement. In this view, he went first to Vienna in Austria, with Mr. Kellerman, the Muscovite ambassador, and visited the libraries and learned men wherever he came. He commenced author at nineteen, when he published a kind of “Commentary upon Scipio’s Dream,” and “A Dissertation upon the Principles of Civil and Political Prude-nee.”

is the name of many eminent personages recorded in ancient writers, particularly Julius Polysenus, of whom some Greek epigrams are extant, in the first book of the Anthologia. But the Polyænus who is best known, flourished in the second century, and is the author of the eight books of the “Stratagems of illustrious Commanders in war.” He appears to have been a Macedonian, and probably was a soldier in the younger part of his life; but we are more certain that he was a rhetorician, and a pleader of causes and that he enjoyed a place of trust and dignity under the emperors Antoninus and Veriis, to whom he dedicated his work. The “Strategemata” were published in Greek by Isaac Casaubon, with notes, in 1589, 12mo but no good edition of them appeared, till that of Leyden; 1690, in 8vo. The title-page runs thus: “Polygeni Strategematum libri octo, Justo Vulteio interprete, Pancratius Maasvicius recensuit, Isaaci Casauboni nee non suas notas adjecit.” This was followed, in 1756, by Mursinua’s edition, Berlin, and by that of Coray, at Paris in 1809, 8vo. We have now an excellent English translation by Mr. R. Shepherd, 1793, 4to. It contains various stratagems, of above three hundred commanders and generals of armies, chiefly Greeks and Barbarians, which are at least entertaining, and illustrative of the manners of the times in which those commanders lived but it may be doubted whether a modern soldier would gain much advantage by making himself master of this tricking study. The original has come down to us incomplete, and with the text considerably mutilated and corrupted; but the style is classical, and even elegant.

, an ancient Greek historian of the sixth century, was born at Caesarea in Palestine, and went thence to Constantinople in the time of the emperor Anastasius whose esteem he obtained, as well as that of Justin the first, and Justinian. His profession was that of a rhetorician and pleader of causes. He was advanced to be secretary to Belisarius, and attended that renowned general in the wars of Persia, Africa, and Italy. He afterwards was admitted into the senate, and became prefect or governor of the city gt Constantinople; where he seems to have died, somewhat above sixty, about the year 560. His history contains eight books; two, of the Persian war, which are epitomized by Photius, in the sixty-third chapter of his “Bibliotheca;” two, of the wars of the Vandals; and four, of that of the Goths; of all which there is a kind of abridgment, in the preface of Agathias, who began his history where Procopius left off. Besides these eight books, Suidas mentions a ninth, which comprehends matters not before published, and is therefore called his avExSbra, or indita. Vossius thought that this book was lost but it has since been published, and gone through many editions. Many learned men have been of opinion, that this is a spurious work, and falsely ascribed to Procopius; and cannot be persuaded, that he, who in the eight books represented Justinian, Theodora, and Belisarius, in a very advantageous light, should in this ninth have made such a collection of particulars as amounts to an invective against them and Le Vayer was so sensibly affected with this argument, that he declares all Procopius’ s history to be ridiculous, if ever so little credit be given to the calumnies of this piece. Fabricius, however, sees no reason, why this secret history tnayhot have been written by Procopius; and he produces several examples, and that of Cicero amongst them, to shew that nothing has been more usual, than fur writers to take greater liberties in their private accounts, than they can venture to introduce in what was designed for the public. There is another work of Procopius, still extant, entitled “KTi<7/xaT<z, sive de sedificiisconditis vel restauratis auspicio Justiniani Imperatoris Hbri vi.” which, with his eight books of history, were first renewed in Greek by Hoeschelius in 1607 for the book of anecdotes, though published in 1624, was not added to these, till the edition of Paris, 1662, in folio, when they were all accompanied with Latin versions.

, an ancient Roman poet who flourished in the first century, was born at Naples, and descended of a good family by his father’s side. His father was a rhetorician, a man of probity and learning, and also a poet, although none of his works are now extant. Our author discovered an early inclination for poetry, which was so much improved by his father’s instructions, that he soon was introduced to the first geniuses of the age, and afterwards to the emperor himself, by his friend Paris, the player, at that time one of the chief court-favourites. His literary merit gained him so large a share of the emperor’s esteem, that he was permitted to sit at table with him among his ministers and courtiers of the highest quality, and was often crowned for his verses, which were publicly recited in the theatre. And, although he once lost the prize in the capitol, the frequent determination of the judges in his favour created him the envy of Martial; who piqued himself much on his extempore productions, and has therefore never mentioned Statius in his account of the poets, his contemporaries. The “Thebaid,” finished at Naples, and dedicated to Domitian, was received at Rome with the greatest applause, as Juvenal has told us in a celebrated passage, which, however, is thought bv some to have been nothing more than a sneer. In this passage, which begins