Julius Pollux

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Julius Pollux (Greek: Ἰούλιος Πολυδεύκης, Ioulios Polydeukes; fl. 2nd century) was a Greek scholar and rhetorician from Naucratis, Ancient Egypt.[1][2][3] Emperor Commodus appointed him a professor-chair of rhetoric in Athens at the Academy — on account of his melodious voice, according to Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists.

Works

Pollux was the author of the Onomasticon (Ὀνομαστικόν), a Greek

Hellenistic historiography), and from contemporary spoken Greek.[4] The entries in the work are arranged not alphabetically but according to subject-matter. Pollux claims that the exact order of subjects is random, but contemporary scholarship has discerned organisational patterns based on "the paradigmatic relationships at the heart of Romano-Greek society."[5] For example, Book 5 is divided into two halves, the first of which deals with words relating to hunting and the second half of which Pollux calls "eclectic" (e.g. the entries in 5.148-5.152 are: proischesthai "to hold forth", grammata en stelais "writing on steles", diakores "satiated", anamphibolon "unambiguous"), but, within this eclecticism, Zadorojnyi nevertheless notes a tendency to focus on binary oppositions like love and hate, praise and denunaciation.[6]

It supplies much rare and valuable information on many points of classical antiquity — objects in daily life, the theater, politics – and quotes numerous fragments of lost works. Thus, Julius Pollux became invaluable for

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
, 1842, etc.

Nothing of his rhetorical works has survived, except some of their titles (in the Suda).

Contemporary reception

Pollux was probably the person satirized by Lucian as a worthless and ignorant person who gains a reputation as an orator by sheer effrontery, and pilloried in his Lexiphanes, a satire upon the affectation of obscure and obsolete words.

Editions

  • 1502, ed. by Aldus Manutius in Venice. Re-edited at 1520 by Lucantonio Giunta and at 1536 by Simon Grynaeus in Basel.
  • 1900–1967, ed. E. Bethe, Leipzig (Teubner). Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3.

Translations

A Latin translation made by

antiquaries
and scholars, and anatomists, who adopted obscure Greek words for parts of the body.

References

  1. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica
  2. ^ John Hazel, Who's who in the Greek world, p.197, Routledge, 1999
  3. ^ Andrew Dalby, Food in the Ancient World: From A to Z, p.265, Routledge, 2003
  4. ^ a b c Zadorojnyi 2019, p. 49.
  5. ^ König 2007, p. 34.
  6. ^ Zadorojnyi 2019, p. 50.

Bibliography

External links