Eutychius Proclus ( grc, Εὐτύχιος Πρόκλος, Eutychios Proklos, or Tuticius Proculus in some sources) was a

grammarian Grammarian may refer to: * Alexandrine grammarians, philologists and textual scholars in Hellenistic Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE * Biblical grammarians, scholars who study the Bible and the Hebrew language * Grammarian (Greco-Roman ...

who flourished in the 2nd century AD. He served as one of two

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

tutors for the Roman emperor

Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Latin: áːɾkus̠ auɾέːli.us̠ antɔ́ːni.us̠ English: ; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good ...

, along with Trosius Aper. He was from the North African city of Sicca Veneria (modern

El Kef El Kef ( ar, الكاف '), also known as ''Le Kef'', is a city in northwestern Tunisia. It serves as the capital of the Kef Governorate. El Kef is situated to the west of Tunis and some east of the border between Algeria and Tunisia. It has ...

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

). It is possibly this Proclus who is mentioned by Trebellius Pollio as the most learned grammarian of his age. For his work with the emperor, Proculus was later given senatorial rank, and a

consulship A consul held the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic ( to 27 BC), and ancient Romans considered the consulship the second-highest level of the '' cursus honorum'' (an ascending sequence of public offices to which polit ...

, though it is not clear what year he served as consul. He also required financial support from Marcus in order to carry the financial burdens of a senatorial career, so from here we may assume he was not born into a wealthy or aristocratic family.

Works

His writings are now lost, though there is a (probably fictitious) work occasionally attributed to him titled ''De peregrinis regionibus''. This is likely because of some of the confusion over his identity. Some scholars through the 19th century believed that he was to be identified with the author of a ''

Chrestomathy A chrestomathy ( ; from the Ancient Greek (, “desire of learning”) = (, “useful”) + (, “learn”)) is a collection of selected literary passages (usually from a single author); a selection of literary passages from a foreign language ...

'' which is our most important source of information on the

Epic Cycle The Epic Cycle ( grc, Ἐπικὸς Κύκλος, Epikòs Kýklos) was a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems, composed in dactylic hexameter and related to the story of the Trojan War, including the '' Cypria'', the '' Aethiopis'', the so- ...

. Most modern scholars consider this attribution likely incorrect however, as this was a Greek work and Eutychius Proclus was a grammarian of Latin.

Identity

There was historically some confusion over his identity based on earlier scholarship. Raffaello Maffei, the Italian historian and humanist of the 15th and 16th centuries, published information about Proculus in his ''Commentariorum rerum urbanarum libri XXXVIII'', which was a historical source for many later writers. The work itself was quite unreliable in many places. Maffei identifies the 5th-century

Platonist Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at ...

philosopher

Proclus Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485), called Proclus the Successor ( grc-gre, Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος, ''Próklos ho Diádokhos''), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophe ...

with "Tuticius Proculus", even though the two men lived three centuries apart, and states that the philosopher was the one who was Aurelius's tutor. Numerous other confusions stemmed from this error, including attribution of works not actually authored by him, and many later writers made similar errors based on Maffei's writings. As to his name, scholar Anthony Birley has suggested that the name "Eutychius" is actually a corruption of the text, and in all cases should properly read "Tuticius". We have an inscription from

that mentions a "Marcus Tuticius Proculus" as '' procurator Augusti'' (that is, financial procurator, or CFO of a

Roman province The Roman provinces (Latin: ''provincia'', pl. ''provinciae'') were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was rule ...

). This could be the same man, or a relative.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Proclus, Eutychius 2nd-century writers Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown Tutors of Marcus Aurelius 2nd-century Romans Grammarians of Latin