Born at Augsburg, he studied at Tübingen, and in 1558, when very short of money, he was appointed to succeed Micyllus in the professorship of Greek at the University of Heidelberg; he exchanged it for a chair of logic (publicus organi Aristotelii iliterpres) in 1562.
Xylander was the author of a number of important works, including Latin translations of Dio Cassius (1558), Plutarch (1560-1570) and Strabo (1571). He also edited (1568) the geographical lexicon of Stephanus of Byzantium; the travels of Pausanias (completed after his death by F Sylburg, 1583); the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (1558, the editio princeps based on a Heidelberg manuscript now lost; a second edition in 1568 with the addition of Antoninus Liberalis, Phlegon of Tralles, an unknown Apollonius, and Antigonus of Carystus--all paradoxographers); and the chronicle of George Cedrenus (1566). He translated the first six books of Euclid into German with notes, the Arithmetica of Diophantus, and the De quattuor mathematicis scientiis of Michael Psellus into Latin.
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