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Wyttenbach

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

DANIEL bah), a Dutch scholar; born in Bern, (vit'ten- Aug. 7, 1746; studied at Marburg, Göttingen, and Leyden; became Professor of Greek at the Remonstrant Gymnasium at Amsterdam in 1771, of Philosophy at the Athenæum in 1779, and succeeded in 1799 to Ruhnken's chair of rhetoric at the university. His greatest work is the edition of Plutarch's " als," with rich annotations and an ad- Mormirable "Greek Index to Plutarch's Works" (Oxf. 8 vols. 1795-1380). He retired in 1816, and died after some years of blindness in Osgeest, Jan. 17, 1820 . His wife, Johanna Gallien, a niece of Hanau, whom he married at 72, was a remarkably accomplished She lived after her husband's death at woman. Paris. Vol. X X, x, the 24th letter of the English alphabet. It is superfluous, as it represents no sound which cannot be expressed by other letters. Thus, when used at the beginning of a word it has precisely the sound of z; when occurring in the middle of a word it usually has the sound of ks, as in axis, taxes, forces, etc.; it also has the same sound in some cases when terminating a word, as lax, wax, etc.; when it terminates a syllable, and more especially an initial syllable, if the syllable following it is open or accented, it frequently has the sound of gz, as in luxury, exhaust, exalt, exotic, initial it occurs only in etc... As an words of Greek origin, or formed from Greek words, most of these formations being of a scientific or technical nature. X as a symbol is used in numeration: For 10, in this case being composed of two Vs (5) placed one above the other, the lower one being inverted. When placed horizontally it stands for 1,000 and with a dash over it, it represents 10,000. In ordinary writing X is frequently used as an abbreviation for Christ. In this case the symbol is not the same letter as the English X, but represents the Greek X (Ch), as in Xn=Christian, Xmas Christmas.

What Has Changed in the Last Century

Nothing about Wyttenbach's life has altered since Collier's wrote this in 1921, though the entry's typography betrays it: his Plutarch appeared 1795-1830, not "1795-1380", and he died at Oegstgeest, not "Osgeest". What has moved is the standing of the work. His annotated Moralia was displaced as the working text first by Bernardakis's Teubner edition of the 1880s-90s and then by the twentieth-century Teubner and Loeb editions, while the "Greek Index to Plutarch's Works" he compiled remained useful to scholars far longer than his commentary did, and is now largely superseded by searchable digital corpora. Wyttenbach is today remembered less as an editor than as the last major figure of the Dutch Hellenist tradition of Hemsterhuis and Ruhnken, whose chair he took in 1799, before the centre of classical philology shifted decisively to Germany.

Written for this edition, 2026.