He studied at Marburg, Jena, Geneva, and, lastly, Paris, where his teacher was Henry Estienne (Stephanus), to whose great Greek Thesaurus Sylburg afterwards made important contributions.
In 1583 he resigned his post at Lich and moved to Frankfurt to act as corrector and editor of Greek texts for the enterprising publisher Johann Wechel.
[2] To his Frankfurt period belong the editions of Pausanias, Herodotus, Dionysius Halicarnassensis (one of his best pieces of work, highly praised by Carsten Niebuhr), Paeanius, Aristotle, the Greek and Latin sources for the history of the Roman emperors and the Peri syntaxeos of Apollonius Dyscolus.
The Wechel series was continued by Hieronymus Commelinus (Jerome Commelin) of Heidelberg,[3] for whom Sylburg edited Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, the Etymologicum magnum, the Scriptores de re rustica, the Greek gnomic poets, Xenophon, Nonnus and other works.
All Sylburg's editions show great critical power and indefatigable industry; the latter may well have caused his death.