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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
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 ...
.
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.]
See also
*
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 ...
*
Lille Stesichorus
*
Polytonic orthography
Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The more complex polytonic orthography ( el, πολυτονικό σύστημα γραφής, translit=polytonikó sýstīma grafī́s), which includes fi ...
Citations
General sources
*
External links
"Library of Alexandria"��''
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