Friedrich Sylburg

Friedrich Sylburg (1536 - February 17, 1596), German classical scholar, son of a farmer, was born at Wetter near Marburg. He studied at Marburg, Jena, Geneva, and, lastly, Paris, where his teacher was Henry Estienne (Stephanus), to whose great Greek Thesaurus Sylburg afterwards made important contributions.

Returning to Germany, he held educational posts at Neuhaus near Wörms[?] and at Lich near Giessen[?], where he edited a useful edition of the Institutiones in graecam linguam (1580) of Nicolaus Clenardus[?] (Cleynaerts, 1495-1542). In 1583 he resigned his post at Lich and moved to Frankfurt-am-Main to act as corrector and editor of Greek texts for the enterprising publisher Johann Wechel[?]. To his Frankfurt period belong the editions of Pausanias, Herodotus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (one of his best pieces of work and highly praised by Niebuhr), Aristotle, the Greek and Latin sources for the history of the Roman emperors and the IlepJ owras of Apollonius Dyscolus[?].

In 1591 he removed to Heidelberg, where he became librarian to the elector palatine. The Wechel series was continued by Hieronymus Commelinus[?] of Heidelberg, for whom Sylburg edited Clement of Alexander, Justin Martyr, the Etymologicum magnum, the Scriptores de re rustica, the Greek gnomic poets, Xenophon, Nonnus and other works. All Sylburg's editions show great critical power and indefatigable industry. He died on the 17th of February 1596, a victim of over-work.

See F Koldewey, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie; KW Justi, in Strieder's Hessische Gelehrten-Geschichte, xviii. (Marburg, 1819); Conrad Bursian, Geschichte der classischen Philologie in Deutschland (1883); JE Sandys, Hist, of Class. Schol., ii. (1908), p. 270.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.