POLLUX

Julius Pollux. A Greek rhetorician, a native of Naucratis in Egypt, in the latter half of the 2nd century A.D.., tutor of the emperor Commodus, from whom he received an appointment as a public teacher in Athens. His contemporaries, such as Lucian, ridiculed him for his small capacity. [Lucian is supposed to have attacked him in his Rhetorum Praeceptor, his Lexiphanes, and his De Saltatione, chap. 33.] We possess from his hand a dictionary in ten books dedicated to his pupil. This is arranged, not in the order of the alphabet, but according to subjects. In spite of all its confusion, and its want of critical acumen, it throws much light on the language, literature, and antiquities of Greece.