Friedrich Sylburg

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Friedrich Sylburg (1536 – 17 February 1596) was a German classical scholar.^[1]

The son of a farmer, he 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 Neuhausen near Worms and at Lich near Gießen, where he edited a useful edition of the Institutiones in graecam linguam (1580) of Nicolaus Clenardus (Cleynaerts). In 1583 he resigned his post at Lich and moved to Frankfurt to act as corrector and editor of Greek texts for the enterprising publisher Johann Wechel.^[2] To his Frankfurt period belong the editions of Pausanias, Herodotus, Dionysius Halicarnassensis (one of his best pieces of work, highly praised by Carsten Niebuhr), Paeanius, Aristotle, the Greek and Latin sources for the history of the Roman emperors and the Peri syntaxeos of Apollonius Dyscolus.

In 1591 he moved to Heidelberg, where he became librarian to the elector palatine. The Wechel series was continued by Hieronymus Commelinus (Jerome Commelin) of Heidelberg,^[3] for whom Sylburg edited Clement of Alexandria, 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; the latter may well have caused his death.