Apollodorus Of Athens
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Apollodorus of Athens (, ''Apollodoros ho Athenaios''; c. 180 BC – after 120 BC), son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar, historian, and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace, under whom he appears to have studied together with his contemporary Dionysius Thrax. He left (perhaps fled)
Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...
around 146 BC, most likely for Pergamon, and eventually settled in
Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...
.


Literary works

* ''Chronicle'' (''Χρονικά'', ''Chronika''), a Greek history in verse from the fall of
Troy Troy (/; ; ) or Ilion (; ) was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey. It is best known as the setting for the Greek mythology, Greek myth of the Trojan War. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destina ...
in the 12th century BC to roughly 143 BC (although later it was extended as far as 109 BC), and based on previous works by Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Its dates are reckoned by its references to the archons of Athens. As most archons only held office for one year, scholars have been able to pin down the years to which Apollodorus was referring. The poem is written in comic trimeters and is dedicated to the second-century BC king of Pergamon, Attalus II Philadelphus. * ''On the Gods'' (''Περὶ θεῶν'', ''Peri theon'', prose, in 24 books), lost but known through quotes to have included etymologies of the names and epithets of the gods, rifled and quoted by the Roman Epicurean Philodemus; further fragments appear in
Oxyrhynchus Papyri The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrology, papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient Landfill, rubbish dump near Oxyrhync ...
. * A twelve-book essay about Homer's Catalogue of Ships, also based on Eratosthenes of Cyrene and Demetrius of Scepsis, dealing with Homeric geography and how it has changed along the centuries.
Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...
relied greatly on this for books 8 through 10 of his own '' Geographica''. * Other possible works include an early
etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...
(possibly the earliest by an Alexandrian writer), and analyses of the poets Epicharmus of Kos and Sophron. * Apollodorus produced numerous other critical and grammatical writings, which have not survived. * His eminence as a scholar gave rise to several imitations, forgeries and misattributions. The '' Bibliotheca'' (or ''Library''), an encyclopedia of
Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...
, was traditionally attributed to him; it was not written by him, however, as it cites Castor the Annalist, a contemporary of
Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...
, providing a '' terminus post quem'' after the time of Apollodorus.Perseus Encyclopedia As a result, the author of the ''Bibliotheca'' is often referred to as "Pseudo-Apollodorus".


Notes


References

* * * Bravo, Benedetto. ''La Chronique d'Apollodore et le Pseudo-Skymnos: érudition antiquaire et littérature géographique dans la seconde moitié du IIe siècle av. J.-C.'' (Leuven: Peeters, 2009) (Studia Hellenistica, 46). * Fleischer, Kilian
''The Original Verses of Apollodorus' Chronica: edition, translation and commentary''
(Berlin/New York, De Gruyter 2020) (Sozomena 19). * Παπαθωμόπουλος, Μανόλης ed. ''Απολλόδωρου Βιβλιοθήκη / Apollodori Bibliotheca, post Richardum Wagnerum recognita. Εισαγωγή – Κείμενο – Πίνακες'' (Αθήνα: Εκδοσεις Αλήθεια, 2010) (Λόγος Ελληνικός, 4).


External links

*


ABEL: Apollodori Bibliotheca ELectronica
a scholarly bibliography {{DEFAULTSORT:Apollodorus Philosophers in ancient Alexandria Ancient Greek essayists Ancient Greek grammarians Hellenistic-era philosophers from Africa Hellenistic-era philosophers in Athens Stoic philosophers 2nd-century BC Greek historians 2nd-century BC Greek poets 2nd-century BC Greek philosophers 180s BC births 110s BC deaths