Ophelius

Ophelius is known only as a correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium (d. c. 450), to whom Isidore addressed at least eighteen letters in the early-to-mid-5th-century milieu of Pelusium and the eastern Nile Delta. The letters present him as a teacher of letters and literature, addressed both as "the grammarian" and as "the scholasticus" (a learned advocate), with pupils of his own; Isidore writes to him with a mixture of correction and instruction, distinguishing the philosophers' use of "homonym" and "synonym" from the grammarians' looser usage and remarking that Ophelius "ha[s] no share in such studies" and an "untrained mind" in philosophy. The correspondence ranges over points of grammar and logic, curiosities of natural history (why some animals bear live young and others lay eggs), the exposition of Scripture (the Passover eaten "with earnestness," the adornment of women), and exhortations that Ophelius urge his students toward virtue and self-control rather than mere skill in words. Beyond Isidore's letters he is otherwise unattested, and no dates, offices, or biographical details about him can be established from this evidence.