Oros of Alexandria

Oros (Ὤρος) was a late classical/Byzantine lexicographer and grammarian active in the mid-5th century. According to the Suda he was born in Alexandria and taught in Constantinople. The Suda lists ten titles by him, but little of his work survives.^[1]

Fragments of his lexicon of Attic usages are preserved in later lexica.^[2] This work sought to counter the hyperatticist doctrine favoured by some contemporary lexicographers, who were inspired by the works of the 2nd-century grammarian Phrynichus. Oros' work was influential in the later Byzantine lexicographical tradition.

The codex Messinensis graecus 118 contains a fragment of a work on orthography concerning the use of the iota subscript. This is sometimes styled the Lexicon Messanense.^[3]

Fragments of two other works survive, one a list of words with more than one meaning, the other a list of toponyms and their supposed etymologies.

Notes

1. ^ Suda ω 201
2. ^ Alpers (1981) 149-260
3. ^ H. Rabe, "Lexicon Messanense de iota ascripto", Rheinisches Museum 47 (1892) 405-413

Bibliography

• Klaus Alpers (1981), Das attizistische Lexikon des Oros ([Sammlung griechischer und lateinischer Grammatiker 4] Berlin).
• Klaus Alpers (1990), Griechische Lexicographie in Antike und Mittelalter. Dargestellt an ausgewählten Beispielen in H.-A. Koch and A. Krup-Eber (eds.), Welt der Information. Wissen und Wissensvermittlung in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Stuttgart) 14-38.
• Klaus Alpers (2001), Lexicographie (B.I-III) in G. Üding and W. Jens (eds.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik 2 (Tübingen) 194-210.
• R. Reitzenstein (1897), Geschichte der griechischen Etymologika: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philologie in Alexandria und Byzanz (Leipzig; repr. Amsterdam 1964).
• N.G. Wilson (1983), Scholars of Byzantium (London) 51f.

External links

• The Tertullian Project