__NOTOC__ Aristophanes of Byzantium ( grc-gre, Ἀριστοφάνης ὁ Βυζάντιος ; BC) was a

Hellenistic Greek Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...

scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researc ...

, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in

Homeric scholarship Homeric scholarship is the study of any Homeric topic, especially the two large surviving epics, the '' Iliad'' and '' Odyssey''. It is currently part of the academic discipline of classical studies. The subject is one of the oldest in scholarsh ...

, but also for work on other classical authors such as

Pindar Pindar (; grc-gre, Πίνδαρος , ; la, Pindarus; ) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar ...

and

Hesiod Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet ...

. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus,

Callimachus Callimachus (; ) was an ancient Greek poet, scholar and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works in a wide varie ...

, and Dionysius Iambus. He succeeded Eratosthenes as head

librarian A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users. The role of the librarian has changed much over time ...

of the Library of Alexandria at the age of sixty.

Work

Aristophanes was the first to deny that the " Precepts of Chiron" was the work of

Inventions

Accent system

Aristophanes is credited with the invention of the accent system used in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

to designate pronunciation, as the tonal, pitched system of archaic and

Classical Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

was giving way (or had given way) to the stress-based system of Koine. This was also a period when Greek, in the wake of

Alexander Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...

's conquests, was beginning to act as a lingua franca for the Eastern

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...

(replacing various

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...

). The accents were designed to assist in the pronunciation of Greek in older literary works.

Punctuation

He also invented one of the first forms of

punctuation Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...

in ; single dots (''théseis'', Latin ''distinctiones'') that separated verses (colometry), and indicated the amount of breath needed to complete each fragment of text when reading aloud (not to comply with rules of grammar, which were not applied to punctuation marks until centuries later). For a short passage (a ''komma''), a '' stigmḕ mésē'' dot was placed mid-level (·). This is the origin of the modern comma punctuation mark, and its name. For a longer passage (a ''kolon''), a '' hypostigmḗ'' dot was placed level with the bottom of the text (.), similar to a modern colon or

semicolon The semicolon or semi-colon is a symbol commonly used as orthographic punctuation. In the English language, a semicolon is most commonly used to link (in a single sentence) two independent clauses that are closely related in thought. When a ...

, and for very long pauses (''periodos''), a '' stigmḕ teleía'' point near the top of the line of text (^·). He used a symbol resembling a for an

obelus An obelus (plural: obeluses or obeli) is a term in typography that refers to a historical mark which has resolved to three modern meanings: * Division sign * Dagger * Commercial minus sign (limited geographical area of use) The word "obel ...

Lexicography

As a lexicographer he compiled collections of archaic and unusual words. He died in

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...

around 185–180 BC. His students included Callistratus,

Aristarchus of Samothrace Aristarchus of Samothrace ( grc-gre, Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σαμόθραξ ''Aristarchos o Samothrax''; c. 220 – c. 143 BC) was an ancient Greek grammarian, noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the h ...

, and perhaps Agallis.

Surviving works

All that has survived of Aristophanes of Byzantium's voluminous writings are a few fragments preserved through quotation in the literary commentaries, or ''

scholia Scholia (singular scholium or scholion, from grc, σχόλιον, "comment, interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of t ...

'', of later writers, several ''argumenta'' to works of Greek drama, and part of a glossary. The most recent edition of the extant fragments was edited by William J. Slater.''Aristophanis Byzantii fragmenta'', Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986.

Citations

General sources

External links

"Library of Alexandria"
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Catholic Encyclopedia The ''Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church'' (also referred to as the ''Old Catholic Encyclopedia'' and the ''Original Catholic Encyclopedia'') i ...

'' article {{DEFAULTSORT:Aristophanes Of Byzantium 180s BC deaths 250s BC births 2nd-century BC Greek people 3rd-century BC Greek people Ancient Byzantines Ancient Greek grammarians Ancient Greek lexicographers Librarians of Alexandria Homeric scholars