c. 216–144 BCE · head of the Library · editor and commentator · royal tutor
Aristarchus of Samothrace
Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σαμόθρᾳξ
In Alexandria: c. 200–145 BCE
The greatest of the Alexandrian critics, tutor to the royal children and head of the Library until 145 BCE, when he fled Ptolemy VIII to Cyprus and died there. The Homeric text settled in his time: papyri show the unruly early Homer, with its extra lines, giving way to a text of standard length from about 150 BCE. The change is usually credited to Alexandrian scholarship, perhaps his own, but the common text that followed does not keep most of his readings.
Their life and work
He studied under Aristophanes and later became head of the Library himself; P.Oxy. 1241 puts Apollonius the Eidographer between them. The papyrus also calls him tutor to the children of 'Philopator', a slip its first editors corrected to Philometor or Epiphanes. The Suda says he taught the son of Ptolemy VI Philometor, and Athenaeus (2.71b) names Ptolemy VIII as his pupil. The Suda credits him with more than eight hundred books of commentary. His judgements reach us chiefly through the scholia of the Venice manuscript of the Iliad, which keep his critical signs and excerpts from two scholars of the age of Augustus: Aristonicus, who explained the signs, and Didymus, who reported his readings. The rule of explaining Homer from Homer, stated by Porphyry, is usually traced to him. Among the pupils the purge of 145 BCE scattered were Dionysius Thrax and Apollodorus of Athens.
Our device: Their emblem is a marginal star, the asteriskos. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
On the shelves
- Aristarchus of Samothrace, Edition and Commentaries on Homer · c. 180–145 BCE · Survives in fragments
Moments
- c. 175–145 BCE · Homer's text settles in Aristarchus's time Known: attested
- 145 BCE · Ptolemy VIII drives out the scholars Known: attested
In the show
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Sources (8)
- Suda Aristarchos, α 3892 (opens in a new tab)
- 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)
- R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) 210–233
- R. S. Bagnall, "Alexandria: Library of Dreams", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146.4 (2002) 348–362 360
- M. L. West, Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2001)
- Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 2.71b
- Scholia to the Iliad Venetus A (Marc. gr. 822)
- E. Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)