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Guilielmus Xylander

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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GUILIELMUS XYLANDER (WILHELM HOLTZMAN, according to his own spelling) (1532-1576), German classical scholar, was born at Augsburg on the 26th of December 1532. He studied at Tubingen, and in 1558, when in a state of abject poverty (caused, according to some, by his intemperate habits), he was appointed to succeed Micyllus (Molshem, Molseym or Molsheym) in the professorship of Greek at Heidelberg, which he exchanged for that of logic (publicus organi Aristotelii interpres) in 1562. He died at Heidelberg on the 10th of February 1576. Xylander was the author of a number of important works, among which his Latin translations of Dio Cassius (1558), Plutarch (1560-1570) and Strabo (1571) deserve special mention. He also edited (1568) the geographical lexicon of Stephanus of Byzantium; the travels of Pausanias (completed after his death by F. Sylburg, 1583); the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (1558, the editio princeps based upon a Heidelberg MS. now lost; a second edition in 1568 with the addition of Antoninus Liberalis, Phlegon of Tralles, an unknown Apollonius, and Antigonus of Carystus - all paradoxographers); and the chronicle of George Cedrenus (1566). He translated the first six books of Euclid into German with notes, the Arithmetica of Diophantus, and the De quattuor mathematicis scientiis of Michael Psellus into Latin.