science

Julius Pollux

Julius Pollux is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Julius Pollux rather than just read about it. In short: Julius Pollux (Greek: Ἰούλιος Πολυδεύκης, Ioulios Polydeukes; fl. 2nd century AD) was a Greek scholar and rhetorician from Naucratis, Roman Egypt. Emperor Commodus appointed him a professor-chair of rhetoric in Athens at the Academy — on account of his melodious voice, according to Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists.

Key takeaways

Julius Pollux belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Julius Pollux to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Julius Pollux from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Julius Pollux (Greek: Ἰούλιος Πολυδεύκης, Ioulios Polydeukes; fl. 2nd century AD) was a Greek scholar and rhetorician from Naucratis, Roman Egypt. Emperor Commodus appointed him a professor-chair of rhetoric in Athens at the Academy — on account of his melodious voice, according to Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists.

Works Pollux was the author of the Onomasticon (Ὀνομαστικόν), a Greek thesaurus or dictionary of Attic synonyms and phrases, in ten books, each prefaced with a dedication to the emperor Commodus. The work forms part of the Atticist movement of the Second Sophistic, and was intended to provide a full catalogue of the Greek vocabulary derived from classical texts that an accomplished orator could deploy. Within this movement, Pollux shows himself "a liberal and inclusive Atticist," willing to admit vocabulary from classical authors in non-Attic dialects (like Herodotus), from post-classical works (such as New Comedy and Hellenistic historiography), and from contemporary spoken Greek. The entries in the work are arranged not alphabetically but according to subject-matter. Pollux claims that the exact order of subjects is random, but contemporary scholarship has discerned organisational patterns based on "the paradigmatic relationships at the heart of Romano-Greek society." For example, Book 5 is divided into two halves, the first of which deals with words relating to hunting and the second half of which Pollux calls "eclectic" (e.g. the entries in 5.148-5.152 are: proischesthai "to hold forth", grammata en stelais "writing on steles", diakores "satiated", anamphibolon "unambiguous"), but, within this eclecticism, Zadorojnyi nevertheless notes a tendency to focus on binary oppositions like love and hate, praise and denunciation. It supplies much rare and valuable information on many points of classical antiquity — objects in daily life, the theater, politics – and quotes numerous fragments of lost works. Thus, Julius Pollux became invaluable for William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 1842, etc. Nothing of his rhetorical works has survived, except some of their titles (in the Suda).

Contemporary reception Pollux was probably the person satirized by Lucian as a worthless and ignorant person who gains a reputation as an orator by sheer effrontery, and pilloried in his Lexiphanes, a satire upon the affectation of obscure and obsolete words.

Editions 1502, ed. by Aldus Manutius in Venice. Re-edited at 1520 by Lucantonio Giunta and at 1536 by Simon Grynaeus in Basel. 1900–1967, ed. E. Bethe, Leipzig (Teubner). Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3.

Translations A Latin translation made by Rudolf Gwalther was published in Basel at 1541 and made Julius Pollux more available to Renaissance antiquaries and scholars, and anatomists, who adopted obscure Greek words for parts of the body.

References

Bibliography Encyclopædia Britannica, 1999 Avotins, I. (1975). "The Holders of the Chairs of Rhetoric at Athens". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 79: 313–324. doi:10.2307/311142. ISSN 0073-0688. JSTOR 311142. Cinzia Bearzot, Franca Landucci, Giuseppe Zecchini (ed.), L'Onomasticon di Giulio Polluce. Tra lessicografia e antiquaria. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2007. Pp. viii, 173 (Contributi di storia antica, 5) König, Jason; Whitmarsh, Tim (2016). König, Jason; Whitmarsh, Tim (eds.). "Re-reading Pollux: Encyclopaedic Structure and Athletic Culture in "Onomasticon" Book 3". The Classical Quarterly. 66 (1): 298–315. doi:10.1017/S0009838816000331. hdl:10023/6992. ISSN 0009-8388. JSTOR 43905750. König, Jason (2007). "Ordering knowledge". In Jason König; Tim Whitmarsh (eds.). Ordering knowledge in the Roman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780511551062. Mauduit, C. (2013). L'Onomasticon de Pollux : aspects culturels, rhétoriques et lexicographiques. Lyon: CEROR. ISBN 9782904974458. Theodoridis, Christos (2003). "Weitere Bemerkungen zum Onomastikon des Julius Pollux". Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. 143: 71–78. ISSN 0084-5388. JSTOR 20191617. Zadorojnyi, Alexei (2019). "The Aesthetics and Politics of Inscriptions in Imperial Literature". In Petrovij, A; Petrovij, I; Thomas, E (eds.). The materiality of text : placement, perception, and presence of inscribed texts in classical antiquity. Leiden: Brill. pp. 48–68. ISBN 9789004379435.

External links Onomasticon cum annotationibus interpretum, Wilhelm Dindorf (ed.), 3 voll., Lipsiae in libraria kuehniana, 1824.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Julius Pollux

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Julius Pollux claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Julius Pollux before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Julius Pollux ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Julius Pollux

In research: Julius Pollux appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Julius Pollux in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Julius Pollux is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2nd-century Greek writers, 2nd-century Romans, Ancient Greek grammarians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Julius Pollux outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Julius Pollux in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Julius Pollux means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Julius Pollux out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Julius Pollux in simple terms?

Why does Julius Pollux matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Julius Pollux?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Julius Pollux.