The Shelves · Miscellaneous writings

Lexeis (Words), and editions of Homer, Hesiod, the lyric poets and drama

Λέξεις

Known · Attestedin Alexandria?Conjectured · Our reconstructionour placementLegend · Told storya told story on its tag

See it on the shelves ›

I · The entry, in his form

In the table of Miscellaneous writings: “lexicon”

Conjectured · Our reconstructionour placement

Aristophanes of Byzantium

c. 257–180 BCE. Took charge of the Library at sixty-two. He edited Homer, Hesiod, the lyric poets and the dramatists, arranged Pindar and Plato, wrote supplements to Callimachus's Pinakes and a great Lexeis, and is credited with the Greek accent marks.

Lexeis (Words), and editions of Homer, Hesiod, the lyric poets and drama

Λέξεις

Opening words not preserved.

Length: not counted

Above, his entry form, filled from what we know. Below, ours.

II · Does it survive? Where to read it

Survives in fragments

Was it in Alexandria?

Known · Attested

Written in Alexandria.

In the cupboard: written at Alexandria by a scholar or court writer a source places there.

Read it today

III · In the show

The show has not yet spoken of this work.

IV · Sources and the living entry

Ancient references (4)
  • Suda α 3933
  • Suda α 3936 (s.v. Aristonymos, on Aristophanes)
  • Vitruvius 7, preface 4-7
  • Diogenes Laertius 3.61-62
Modern scholarship (2)
  • W. J. Slater (ed.), Aristophanis Byzantii Fragmenta (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1986).
  • R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968)

Entry checked 31 Oct 2026 · no corrections · Suggest a correction ›

ΛΕΞΕΙΣ

Read what is told

The back of the tag: a story told of this work, in its teller's voice.

Legend: told story

The plagiarists exposed from memory

Vitruvius tells, some 170 years later, that Aristophanes, judging a poetry contest for the king, exposed the winners as plagiarists by fetching the originals from the Library's shelves from memory. The Suda, a thousand years later, adds that he was jailed on a charge of planning to flee to Eumenes of Pergamon.

Told by Vitruvius, c. 25 BCE, some 170 years later

What the evidence supports

Aristophanes headed the Library (P.Oxy. X 1241) and his lexicography and editions are attested. Both stories are anecdotes.

Sources (2)
  • Vitruvius, On Architecture 7, preface 4–7
  • Suda Aristonymos, α 3936 (on Aristophanes of Byzantium)
The Hall of Told Stories

Beside it in the cupboard