Pollux, Julius

[Onomasticon] Pollucis vocabularii index in latinum tralatus

      Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1502. First edition pPollux, Julius [Poludeukes, Ioulios] (fl. 2nd cent. A.D.). [Onomasticon] Pollucis vocabularii index in latinum tralatus, ut vel graece nescientibus nota sint . . . Folio. [104]ff. Venice: apud Aldum, April 1502. 296 x 201 mm. 18th or early 19th cent. gilt-ruled calf, a little rubbed, rebacked preserving original gilt spine. Fine copy./p#11;pEditio princeps. Pollux, a Greek grammarian and sophist from Alexandria, was appointed professor of rhetoric at the Academy in Athens by the Roman Emperor Commodus (son of Marcus Aurelius). According to Philostratus's Lives of the Sophists, Pollux was given this post on account of his melodious voice. Pollux was the author of numerous rhetorical works, of which only a few titles survive, and the Onomasticon, a thesaurus of Attic Greek synonyms and phrases arranged thematically in ten books. "It supplies in passing 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. 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" (Encyclopaedia Britannica [1999]). The editio princeps of Pollux's Onomasticon, issued by Aldus Manutius in 1502, made the work widely available to Renaissance scholars and antiquaries, and anatomists of the period drew on the Onomasticon for obscure Greek words to describe parts of the body. The Onomasticon was a valuable source of information for several important nineteenth century works of classical scholarship, and has continued to attract the interest of researchers in a variety of fields-in 2004, John H. Dierkx published an article on "Dermatologic terms in the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux" in The American Journal of Dermatopathology. Adams P-1787. Ahmanson-Murphy 54. Renouard, pp. 32-33. 40354/p#11;