Manuel Moschopoulos, Latinized as Manuel Moschopulus , was a Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

 commentator and grammarian, who lived during the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century and was an important figure in the Palaiologan Renaissance. Moschopoulos means "little calf," and is probably a nickname.

Life

Moschopoulos was a student of Maximos Planoudes and possibly his successor as a head of a school in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

, where he taught throughout his life. A mysterious and ill-documented excursion into politics led to his imprisonment for a while.

Works

His chief work is Erotemata grammaticalia , in the form of question and answer, based upon an anonymous epitome of grammar, and supplemented by a lexicon of Attic

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek". It is sometimes included in Ionic.- Origin and range...

 noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s. He was also the author of scholia on the first and second books of the Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

, on Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

, Theocritus

Theocritus

Theocritus , the creator of ancient Greek bucolic poetry, flourished in the 3rd century BC.-Life:Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings. We must, however, handle these with some caution, since some of the poems commonly attributed to him have little claim to...

, Pindar

Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...

 and other classical and later authors; of riddle

Riddle

A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and...

s, letters, and a treatise on the magic square

Magic square

In recreational mathematics, a magic square of order n is an arrangement of n2 numbers, usually distinct integers, in a square, such that the n numbers in all rows, all columns, and both diagonals sum to the same constant. A normal magic square contains the integers from 1 to n2...

s. His grammatical treatises formed the foundation of the labors of such promoters of classical studies as Manuel Chrysoloras

Manuel Chrysoloras

Manuel Chrysoloras was a pioneer in the introduction of Greek literature to Western Europe during the late middle ages....

, Theodorus Gaza

Theodorus Gaza

Theodorus Gaza or Theodore Gazis also called by the epithet Thessalonicensis and Thessalonikeus was a Greek humanist and translator of Aristotle, one of the Greek scholars who were the leaders of the...

, Guarini

Giovanni Battista Guarini

Giovanni Battista Guarini was an Italian poet, dramatist, and diplomat.- Life :He was born in Ferrara, and spent his early life both in Padua and Ferrara, entering the service of Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, in 1567...

, and Constantine Lascaris

Constantine Lascaris

Constantine Lascaris was a Greek scholar and grammarian, one of the promoters of the revival of Greek learning in the Italian peninsula, born at Constantinople....

. As an editor, while making many false conjectures, he was responsible for clearing many long-standing errors in the traditional texts. His comments when original, are mainly lexicographical.

Other works include an anti-Latin theological pamphlet. A selection from his works under the title of Manuelis Moschopuli opuscula grammatica was published by F. N. Titze (Leipzig, 1822); see also Karl Krumbacher

Karl Krumbacher

Karl Krumbacher was a German scholar who was an expert on Byzantine culture.He was born at Kürnach im Allgäu in Bavaria, and was educated at the Universities of Munich and Leipzig, and held the professorship of the middle ages and modern Greek language and literature in the former from 1897 to his...

, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897) and M. Treu, Maximi monachi Planudis epistulae (1890), p. 208.

External links

• Manuel Moschopoulos at Convergence
• Manuelis Moschopuli cretensis Opuscula grammatica, in quibus et de usitata graecis ex omni aevo diphthongorum pronuntiatione doctrina insignis : E codice nuper in Bohemia reperto nunc primum edidit graece / Praefationem cum diatribe literaria de Moschopulis et animadversiones suas adiecit Franciscus Nicolaus Titze digitised book in Latin and Ancient Greek at the Hathi Trust digital library (original at Harvard).