Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/1129

Rh MOSCHOPULUS. Graec. vol. i. p. 407, note pg^ and vol. vi. pp. 1 90, 322, &c. ; Saxius, Onomasticon, vol. ii. pp. 387, 445, 591 ; Montucla, IJist. des Mathem. pt. i. liv. V. § 10, vol. i. p. 333, note 6, ed. Paris, 1759; or § 11, vol.i. p. 346, ed. 1799—1802; Bandini, Catal. Codd. Grdec. Laur. Medic, vol. ii. col. 553 ; Harles. Introd. i?i Hist. Ling. Graec. vol. ii. p. 544.) Hody (De Graecis Illudrihus., p. 314, &c.) was disposed to identify the younger Moschopulus with Emanuel Adraniyttenus, a Cretan, who was pre- ceptor of the celebrated Joannes Picas, count of Mirandola, and is mentioned with the highest praises for his erudition in the letters of Aldus Manutius and Angelus Politianus. Of the above scanty account some of the par- ticulars are evidently incorrect, others rest on no sure foundation. An ancient Greek MS. of the Sylloge Dictionum Atticarum, quoted by Ducange (Glossar. Med. et Inf. Graecitatis Notae, col. 29) states it to be a work of Moschopulus " a Byzantine (or native of Constantinople), nephew of the Cretan ;" and may be considered as esta- blishing the facts that there were two Moschopuli, an uncle and a nephew ; that the uncle was a Cre- tan, and a man of such reputation that relationship to him was a thing to be recorded ; and that the nephew was a native of Constantinople, and a writer on grammatical subjects. The date at which the elder is said, in the account given above, to have lived, appears to have been derived from a passage in the Turco-Graecia of Crusius, who states (in Histor. Poliiicam. CPoleos Annotat. p. 44) that he had a MS. of the Erotemata s. Quaes- iiones of Moschopulus, to which the owner had appended a note that it was given him by the priest Clubes, a. d. 1392; and then Crusius states his opinion that Moschopulus flourished in the reijrn of the Byzantine emperor Andronicus the Elder, about A. d. 1300. A careless reader, con- founding the date of the gift with that of the writer, brought down the reign of Andronicus to the latter part of the 14th century ; and this gross anachronism appears to have passed unnoticed. If the author of the Qmtesliones, whether he was the uncle or the nephew, lived in the time of the elder Andronicus, who reigned from A. d. 1282 to 1328, neither of the Moschopuli could have lived so late as the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (a. d. 1453), so that the story of the ne- phew's flight into Italy, consequent on that event, must be rejected. Hody's identification of the tutor of Joannes Picus with the younger Moschopulus must, of course, be rejected also : it appears indeed never to have had any other foundation than the common name of Manuel and the fact of the pre- ceptor being a Cretan ; which latter circumstance furnishes an argument, as Hody evidently felt, not for but against xhe identity ; the nephew, who is said to have fled into Italj', having been a Con- stantinopolitan ; to say nothing of the diversity of the surnames Adramyttenus and Moschopulus. The date assigned by Crusius, A. d. 1300, to the elder Moschopulus is perhaps a little too late : he can hardly have long survived the accession of An- dronicus, A. D. 1282, if indeed he lived till then. Crusius founded his calculation on an historical no- tice given in illustration of the use of the preposition Kara in his MS. of the Erotemata ; but this notice does not appear in the printed editions of that work, and was perhaps added by the transcriber of the MS., and if so, it furnishes no clue to the age of the j MOSCHOPULUS. 1116 author. Even if genuine, we are disposed to un- derstand it as referring to the rupture of the union of the churches, A. D. 1282, so that it does not support the date given by Crusius. Another his- torical notice given in the Nova Grammatices Epi- tome (p. 49, ed. Titze), as illustrating the ten cate- gories, seems to fix the composition of that work to the time (a. d. 1273 to 1282) when Andronicus reigned in conjunction with his father ; but this notice has so little connection with the context, that it is, like the preceding, liable to the suspicion of being interpolated. It is conjectured that Mos- chopulus the Cretan, who wrote a commentary upon Hesiod, is one of the commentators referred to by Georgius Pachymeres {De Andronic. PalaeoL iv. 15, where see Possin's note): this conjecture, which, however, separately regarded, rests on very slight ground, would render it probable that Pachy- meres, who was born in or about a. d. 1240, studied in his boyhood under Moschopulus. In a MS. ascribed by Montfaucon {Biblioth. Coislin. p. 455) to the fourteenth century, are some 'ETrio-ToAat, Epistofae, of Manuel Moschopulus, addressed "■ to Acropolita the great Logotheta," " to the Logotheta Metochita," " to his uncle the Cretan" (tw ^e/^ avTov TC|5 KpTjTTjs, perhaps an error for r^ KpTjTi), from which it appears that the nephew was con- temporary with Georgius Acropolita (who died about A. D. 1282) or his son Constantinus Acropo- lita, and with Theodorus Metochita, who was Logo- theta in A. D. 1294, and perhaps earlier. (Niceph. Gregoras, Hist. Bezant, vi. 8.) A work of Geor- gius Metochita, published in the Graecia Orthodoaia of Allatius, vol. ii. p. 969. is entitled 'AvTipprjais Twu Sjv (Tvueypd^aro MavovrjX 6 rov Kp-qTTjS dveipios, i. e. " A reply to certain writings of Ma- nuel, the nephew of the Cretan." These notices, together with the existence in manuscript, in the library of St. Mark at Venice (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. vi. p. 323, note pp), of a work of Moschopulus, Contra Latinos, combine to show that the younger Moschopulus was contemporary with and was en- gaged in the religious dissensions occasioned by the attempt begun by the emperor Michael Palaeologua (a. b. 1260), and abandoned by his son the elder Andronicus, a short time after his accession (a. d. 1282), to unite the Greek and Latin churches ; and that he survived the appointment to the office of Logotheta of Theodorus Metochita, who held that office in perhaps a. d. 1294. These dates are consist- ent with the supposition that his uncle the Cretan was one of the teachers of Pachymeres, and afford some probability to the conjecture that Pachymer re- fers to him. These scanty notices have been indus- triously gleaned by Titze in his Diatribe Literaria de Moschopulis, which we have chiefly followed. The works ascribed to the Moschopuli are numerous ; the greater part of them are on gram- matical subjects, and are usually ascribed to the nephew ; but in most cases without evidence. Las- caris indeed {Epitome Ling. Graec. lib. iii. Epilog.)^ speaks of the grammatical works of Moschopulus, as if only one of the name had written upon that subject ; and Titze infers from this that they were all written by the uncle, and that the nephew wrote only on theology. The MSS. in a few cases speak of their respective authors deteiTninately, as " the Cretan," " the nephew of the Cretan," or the " Byzantine ;" but are in most cases indeterminate, the author being described as " Moschopulus," " Manuel Moscliopulus," or " Manuel Grauaiiar