styled in MSS. Vir Clarissimus, a designation altogether indefinite,
but very frequently applied to grammarians, was a Platonic philosopher, who lived probably
during the sixth century of the Christian aera, although many place him as early as the
fourth.
Works
He wrote an
Interpretatio Latina partis prioris Timaei
Platonici, to which is appended a voluminous and learned commentary inscribed to a
certain Osius or Hosius, whom Barth and others have asserted, upon no sure grounds, to be
Osius bishop of Cordova, who took a prominent part in the proceedings of the great council
of Nicaea, held in
A. D. 325. The writer of these annotations
refers occasionally with respect to the Mosaic dispensation, and speaks, as a believer
might, of the star which heralded the nativity of our Lord, but expresses himself throughout
with so much ambiguity or so much caution, that he has been claimed by men of all creeds.
Some have not scrupled to maintain, that he was a deacon or archdeacon of the church at
Carthage; Fulgentius Planciades dedicates his tracts
Allegoria librorum
Virgilli and
De prisco Sermone to a Chalicidius, who
may be the
person whom we are now discussing, and calls him
Levitarum Sanctissimus; but in reality it is impossible to discover
from internal evidence whether the author of the translation from Plato was Christian, Jew,
or Heathen, or, as Mosheim has very plausibly conjectured, a sort of nondescript combination
of all three. He certainly gives no hint that the individual to whom the book is addressed
was a dignified ecclesiastic or even a member of the church.
Editions
This translation was first printed under the inspection of Augustinus Justinianus,
bishop of Nebio in Corsica, by Badius Ascensius, Paris, fol. 1520, illustrated by numerous
mathematical diagrams very unskilfully executed; a second edition, containing
also the fragments of Cicero's version of the same dialogue, appeared at Paris, 4to.
1563; a third at Leyden, 4to. 1617, with the notes and corrections of Jo.
Meursius; the most recent and best is that of J. A. Fabricius, Hamburg. fol.
1718, placed at the end of the second volume of the works of Saint Hippolytus. The text
was improved by the collation of a Bodleian MS., and the notes of Meursius are given
entire.