c. 295–215 BCE · poet · head of the Library · royal tutor
Apollonius of Rhodes
Ἀπολλώνιος Ῥόδιος
In Alexandria: c. 270–245 BCE
An Alexandrian, called "the Rhodian" after a stay on Rhodes, pupil of Callimachus and poet of the Argonautica. P.Oxy. 1241, where the list of heads resumes with him after a break, says he tutored a king; the Suda puts him after Eratosthenes instead. The story of a bitter quarrel with Callimachus is probably a later invention.
Their life and work
The Argonautica, in four books, is the only Greek epic of the age to survive whole: Jason's voyage for the golden fleece, with Medea's love at its centre in the third book. P.Oxy. 1241 makes him a royal tutor and a head of the Library before Eratosthenes, which most scholars accept against the Suda's order.
Two short Lives, which come down with the scholia and cannot be closely dated, tell that he read the poem in Alexandria as a young man, was poorly received and withdrew in shame to Rhodes, where he revised it, read it again to acclaim and was given the citizenship. The first Life ends there. The second adds that some say he returned to Alexandria, read it there again with the greatest success, was thought worthy of the Museum's libraries and was buried with Callimachus. Both Lives make him Callimachus's pupil; the quarrel between the two poets rests on other late notices, chief among them the Suda's note that Callimachus's Ibis was aimed at him. Lefkowitz has argued that such Lives were built largely from the poets' own verses, and Hunter and most modern readers treat the quarrel the same way. Legend: told story
Our device: Their emblem is the ship Argo. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
On the shelves
- Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica · c. 270–240 BCE · Survives whole
Moments
- c. 260s–245 BCE · Apollonius of Rhodes at the head of the Library Known: probable, disputed
In the show
The show has not yet spoken of Apollonius of Rhodes.
Sources (8)
- P.Oxy. X 1241 (ed. B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri X, London 1914) col. ii (opens in a new tab)
- Suda Apollonios, α 3419 (opens in a new tab)
- R. Hunter, The Argonautica of Apollonius: Literary Studies (Cambridge, 1993)
- J. Murray, "Burned after Reading: The So-Called List of Alexandrian Librarians in P. Oxy. X 1241", Aitia 2 (2012) (opens in a new tab)
- Lives of Apollonius A and B, in the scholia ed. Wendel, pp. 1–2
- Suda κ 227 (opens in a new tab)
- M. R. Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets, 2nd ed. (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2012)
- R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968)