Guilielmus Xylander

Guilielmus Xylander (Wilhelm Holtzman, according to his own spelling) (December 26, 1532 - February 10, 1576) was a German classical scholar.

Born at Augsburg, he studied at Tübingen, and in 1558, when very short of money, he was appointed to succeed Micyllus in the professorship of Greek at the University of Heidelberg; he exchanged it for a chair of logic ("publicus organi Aristotelii interpres") in 1562.

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 F 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.

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