Wilhelm Xylander

Wilhelm Xylander
Engraving from Bibliotheca chalcographica
Born	(1532-12-26)26 December 1532 Augsburg
Died	10 February 1576(1576-02-10) (aged 43) Heidelberg
Nationality	German
Other names	Guilielmus Xylander, Wilhelm Holtzman
Occupation	Arts Professor
Known for	First translation of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius into Latin

Wilhelm Xylander (born Wilhelm Holtzman, graecized to Xylander; 26 December 1532 – 10 February 1576) was a German classical scholar and humanist.

Born at Augsburg, he studied at Tübingen, and in 1558, when very short of money (caused, according to some, by his intemperate habits), he was appointed to succeed Jakob Micyllus in the professorship of Greek at the University of Heidelberg; he exchanged it for a chair of logic (publicus organi Aristotelici interpres) in 1562.

In Heidelberg church and university politics, Xylander was a close partisan of Thomas Erastus.

Xylander was the author of a number of important works, including Latin translations of Dio Cassius (1558), Plutarch (1560–1570) and Strabo (1571). He also edited (1568) the geographical lexicon of Stephanus of Byzantium; the travels of Pausanias (completed after his death by Friedrich Sylburg, 1583); the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (1558, the editio princeps based on a Heidelberg manuscript 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.

Works

• Marcus Aurelius, De seipso, seu vita sua, libri 12 ed. and trans. by Xylander. Zurich: Andreas Gessner, 1558.

References

Attribution

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Xylander, Guilielmus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Fritz Schöll (1898), "Xylander, Wilhelm", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 44, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 582–593
• Works of Wilhelm Xylander available at the Munich Digitisation Centre (MDZ)