Julius Pollux was a Greek scholar and teacher who lived in the 2nd century CE, during the period of the Roman Empire. He was born in Naucratis, a Greek city in Egypt, and became a student of the famous rhetorician Adrian of Tyre. His career was supported by the Roman emperor Commodus, who appointed him to a prestigious public professorship in rhetoric at Athens. This position placed Pollux within the intellectual movement known as the Second Sophistic, which emphasized the revival of classical Greek oratory and language.

Pollux’s lasting importance rests on his only surviving work, the Onomasticon. This is a large Greek thesaurus or word list organized not alphabetically, but by subject. Its thematic chapters cover a wide range of topics, including the human body, ships, music, and legal institutions. According to modern scholars, the work was designed as a practical resource for orators and students who wanted to use pure, classical Attic Greek vocabulary, which was a major goal of the Atticist movement of his time.

Beyond its original purpose, the Onomasticon is now valued as a significant historical and philological resource. It provides unique insights into the daily life, material culture, and terminology of the ancient world. The work also preserves quotations and references from many earlier Greek authors and texts that have since been lost, making it an important source for classical scholarship.