1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Choeroboscus, Georgius

CHOEROBOSCUS, GEORGIUS (c. A.D. 600), deacon and professor at the oecumenical school at Constantinople. He is also called chartophylax either as the holder of some ecclesiastical office or as superintendent of the university library. It is not known whether “Choeroboscus” (Gr. for “swineherd”) is an allusion to his earlier occupation or an inherited family name. During his tenure of office he delivered a course of lectures on grammar, which has come down to us in the shape of notes taken by his pupils. He drew from the best authorities—Apollonius Dyscolus, Herodian, Orion, Theodosius of Alexandria. The lectures are written in simple style, but suffer from diffuseness. They were much used by Constantine Lascaris in his Greek grammar and by Urban of Belluno (end of 15th cent.). The chief work of Choeroboscus, which we have in its complete form, is the commentary on the canons of Theodosius on Declension and Conjugation. Mention may also be made of a treatise on orthography, of which a fragment (on Quantity) has been preserved; a tract on prosody; commentaries on Hephaestion and Dionysius Thrax; and grammatical notes on the Psalms.

See C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897); A. Hilgard, Grammatici Graeci, iv. (1889–1894), containing the text of the commentary on Theodosius, and a full account of the life and writings of Choeroboscus; L. Kohn in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, iii. 2 (1889); Reitzenstein, Etymologika, 190, n. 4.