Moschopoulos, Manuel

▪ Byzantine grammarian

flourished 14th century, Constantinople, Byzantine Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]

      Byzantine grammarian and critic during the reign (1282–1328) of Andronicus II Palaeologus.

      Little is known of Moschopoulos' life except what can be gathered from his correspondence and a reference in a letter of one Maximus Planudes, who describes him as his pupil. He was a prominent representative of those humanist scholars active during the last revival of classical learning in Byzantium and is best remembered for his Erotemata grammatika (“Grammatical Questions,” first printed in Milan, 1493), a handbook of Greek in the form of question and answer that enjoyed great popularity among Western humanists of the early Renaissance. He also compiled a lexicon of Attic Greek (Sylloge onomaton Attikon) and wrote treatises on mathematics and theology. He studied the works of several Greek poets and wrote commentaries on them; but his major contribution to classical scholarship is his recension of three Sophoclean tragedies (Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus), in which he displays awareness of metrical problems and considerable critical acumen.

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