PSELLUS, the name of several Byzantine writers, of whom the following were the most important.
1. Michael Psellus the elder, a native of Andros and a pupil of Photius. He flourished in the second half of the 9th century, and strove to stem the rising tide of barbarism by his devotion to letters and philosophy. His study of the Alexandrine theology, as well as of profane literature, brought him under the suspicions of the orthodox, and a former pupil of his, by name Constantine, accused him in an elegiac poem of having abandoned Christianity. In order to perfect his knowledge of Christian doctrine, Psellus had recourse to the instructions of Photius, and then replied to his adversary in a long iambic poem, in which he maintained his orthodoxy. It has been conjectured by Allatius, Cave, and others that some of the books commonly attributed to the younger Psellus are the works of the elder, e.g., the Dialogue, on Operations of Demons, and the short treatises On the Virtues of Stones and On Demons. Their reasons, however, resting on the inferiority of literary style and mode of treatment, are inconclusive....
2. Michael Constantine Psellus the younger was born at Constantinople in 1020, of a consular and patrician family. He studied at Athens, and by his talents and vast industry made himself master of all the learning of the age, including theology, law, physics, mathematics, philosophy, and history. At Constantinople he taught philosophy, rhetoric, and dialectic with the greatest success, and was honoured with the title of “Prince of Philosophers” by the emperors, who sometimes sought his advice and employed his services. But in 1078, when his pupil, the emperor Michael Ducas, was deposed, Psellus shared his downfall, being compelled by the new emperor, Nicephorus Botanias, to retire to a monastery. On his accession to the empire in 1081 Alexius Comnenus deprived Psellus of his title of “Prince of Philosophers” and transferred it to his less talented rival John the Italian. He appears to have been still alive in 1105 and perhaps in 1110.
Of his works, which are very numerous, many have not yet been printed. Even of those which have been printed there is no complete edition. Of his published works we may mention—(1) his mathematical Opus in quatuor Mathematicas Disciplinas, Arithmeticam, Musicam, Geometriam, et Astronomiam, published at Venice in 1532, and several times reprinted, as at Basel in 1556 with the notes of Xylander; (2) a Paraphrase of Aristotle's ∏epl lpμτp>eιas, published in Greek by Aldus at Venice in 1503; (3) Synopsis legum, in iambic verse, edited with a Latin translation and notes by Franciscus Bosquetus, Paris, 1632; (4) De Vitiis et Virtutibus, et Allegorise, in iambic verse, published by Arsenius at Rome (no date), and reprinted at Basel, 1544; (5) ΓΓepi èvepyeias δαιμόνων διaλoyos (De operatione daemonum dialogus}, translated into Latin by Petrus Morellus and published at Paris in 1577; (6) De lapidum virtutibus, published in Greek and Latin at Toulouse in 1615 (for 5 and 6 see Michael Psellus above).
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