Friedrich Sylburg
Friedrich Sylburg was a German classical scholar.
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, 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 of Nicolaus Clenardus. 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. To his Frankfurt period belong the editions of Pausanias, Herodotus, Dionysius Halicarnassensis, 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 of Heidelberg, 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.
Works
- F. Sylburg, Dionisii Halicarnassei scripta quae exstant, omnia, et historica, et rhetorica,
- Notes of Sylburg in a critical edition of Aristotle, De Poetica Liber, Ἐτυμολογικὸν τὸ Μέγα or Etymologicon Magnum,
- Various Works of Sylburg held and digitized in original editions,
- List of Works in
Literature and additional sources
- J. G. Jungius, Vita Frid. Sylburgii.
- Fr. Creuzer, 'De Frid. Sylburgii vita et scriptis oratio', in Nova Acta soc. Lat. Jenensis, vol. I, p. 79–102.
- Fr. Creuzer, Frid. Sylburgi epistolae quinque ad Paulum Melissum . Also in Creuzer's Selected Works, p. 195–213.
- K. W. Justi, 'Friedrich Sylburg', in Strieder's Hessischer Gelehrten-Geschichte, Vol. 18, p. 481–494. Also as a separate printing, Marburg 1818. This work cites references to earlier writing about Sylburg.
- Schoell, Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, vol. 18, p. 301 ff.
- L. Kayser, 'Heidelberger Philologen im 16. Jahrhundert,' printed in the Festschrift zur Begrüßung der 24. Philologenversammlung, p. 142–147.
- Sylburg's writings are listed by Joachim Jungius cited above, p. 35–38; in Christian Gottlieb Jöcher’s Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexikon, Vol. IV, Sp. 956 f.; in Johann Heinrich Zedler’s Universal-Lexikon, Vol. 41, Sp. 555–57; and most fully by Karl Wilhelm Justi cited above, p. 490–92.