1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ammonius Grammaticus

12197661911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 1 — Ammonius Grammaticus

AMMONIUS GRAMMATICUS, the supposed author of a treatise entitled Περὶ ὁμοίων καὶ διαφόρων λέξεων (On the Differences of Synonymous Expressions), of whom nothing is known. He was formerly identified with an Egyptian priest who, after the destruction of the pagan temple at Alexandria (389), fled to Constantinople, where he became the tutor of the ecclesiastical historian Socrates. But it seems more probable that the real author was Herennius Philo of Byblus, who was born during the reign of Nero and lived till the reign of Hadrian, and that the treatise in its present form is a revision prepared by a later Byzantine editor, whose name may have been Ammonius.

Text by Valckenaer, 1739, Schäfer, 1822; Kopp, De Ammonii . . . Distinctionibus Synonymicis, 1883.