POLLUX. See Castor and Pollux.

POLLUX, Julius, of Naucratis in Egypt, a Greek sophist of the 2d century. His education was begun by his father, a man of literary culture, and was continued by one Hadrian, but he is said neither to have attained to the excellencies nor fallen into the defects of his master. He taught at Athens, where, according to Philostratus, he was appointed to the professorship by the emperor Commodus on account of his melodious voice. He died at the age of fifty-eight, leaving a son behind him. Suidas gives a list of his rhetorical works, none of which have survived. Philostratus (Fit. Soph., ii. 12) recognizes his natural abilities, but speaks of his rhetoric in very moderate terms. He was ridiculed by Athenodorus, a contemporary teacher at Athens. It is a disputed point whether or not he is the butt of Lucian’s scathing satire in the Lexiphanes and Teacher of Rhetoric. In the Teacher of Rhetoric Lucian lashes a vile and ignorant person who gains a reputation as an orator by sheer effrontery; the application of this—probably grossly exaggerated—portrait to Pollux derives some colour from the remark of Philostratus that the speeches of Pollux were more remarkable for boldness than art. The Lexiphanes, a satire upon the use of obscure and obsolete words, may conceivably have been directed against. Pollux as the author of the Onomasticon. This work, which we still possess, is a Greek dictionary in ten books dedicated to Commodus, and arranged not alphabetically but according to subject-matter. Though mainly a dictionary of synonyms and phrases, it supplies much rare and valuable information on many points of classical antiquity. It also contains numerous fragments of writers now lost....

a tutelar deity of mariners in ancient times, Acts xxviii, 11, whose image was placed either at the prow or stern of the ship.