1
Alexandrian Scholarship The expression
“Alexandrian scholarship” generally indicates the
scholarship that was produced at Alexandria in
Egypt in ca. 285 BCE until ca. 7th century CE when
the Arabs occupied Alexandria. However, more
specifically, by “Alexandrian scholarship” scholars
mean the philological, grammatical, and exegeti-
cal activity that took place in Alexandria from
ca. 285, when the Museum and the Library
were founded by Ptolemy I (d. 283/282 BCE), to
145 BCE. That year, Ptolemy VIII came to power
and many intellectuals, and in particular the
head librarian of that time, ARISTARCHUS OF
SAMOTHRACE, had to abandon the city en masse,
bringing to an end the golden age of Hellenistic
scholarship. The Alexandrian refugees spread
over the rest of the Mediterranean (Aristarchus
went to Cyprus, where he died in 144 BCE) and
founded new schools outside Egypt. The Library
and the Museum itself were not closed or
destroyed in 145 BCE and some scholars, less sus-
picious to the regime, remained. Therefore, even
though the golden age of ancient scholarship
ended with Aristarchus of Samothrace, the last
and most famous of the head librarians, many
scholars and intellectuals still continued to work
in Alexandria on the exegesis and edition of
ancient texts. This learned activity continued
under the last Ptolemies and under the Roman
Empire, when Alexandria became an important
center for Hellenized Jews like PHILO and, later on,
for the Christian philologist, exegete, and theolo-
gian Origenes (who edited the Bible following
Alexandrian philological criteria). Even if the
Library was at least partially burned by Caesar
during his siege of Alexandria in 48 BCE, intellec-
tual life never ceased during the Roman Empire.
The foundation of the Library and the Museum
is traditionally attributed to Ptolemy I and his son
Ptolemy II (d. 246 BCE); the role that each of them
played is impossible to determine since our main
sources (Tzetzes, Prolegomena ad Aristophanes,
and the Letter of Aristeas) are confused on this
point. Ptolemy I invited Demetrius of Phalerum,
a Peripatetic and pupil of Theophrastus, to help
him with his project. Though the real contribu-
tion of Demetrius to the constitution of the
Library and the Museum is difficult to assess, the
The Homer Encyclopedia, edited by Margalit Finkelberg
© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
learned work produced by the Alexandrian schol-
ars is definitely influenced by the Peripatetic
approach to knowledge and research.
First and foremost, the Library was organized
with the goal of collecting all the works of Greek
literature, in order to catalogue and reorganize the
past literary tradition of the Greeks. To reach this
goal, the Ptolemies pursued a policy of systematic
book acquisition. The books – approximately
490,000 according to Tzetzes – were all collected
in the Library, and scholars hired by the king
worked in the Library and in the Museum to
organize and study them. At the head of the
Library was a head librarian. We know the names
of six librarians (POxy. 1241): ZENODOTUS OF
EPHESUS (ca. 285–270 BCE), Apollonius Rhodius
(ca. 270–245 BCE), ERATOSTHENES OF CYRENE (ca.
245–204/201 BCE), ARISTOPHANES OF BYZANTIUM (ca.
204/201–189/186 BCE), Apollonius Eidographus
(ca. 189/186–175 BCE), and Aristarchus of
Samothrace (ca. 175–145 BCE).
The main achievement of the Alexandrian
scholars of this period is the reorganization of the
past literary tradition of Greece and the produc-
tion of standard EDITIONS of Greek authors, which
are at the basis of the medieval tradition that we
still use. They also wrote commentaries (HUPOM-
NÊMATA) on ancient authors, lexica (lexeis) collect-
ing literary as well as dialectal or rare words, and
monographs discussing particular literary topics
(sungrammata). Callimachus, who also worked
there, was the author of the so-called Pinakes,
“tablets,” a catalogue of Greek literary works
ordered according to author and genre. Each
author was given a short biography, a list of works
with the incipit, the total number of lines, and
probably some discussion over questions of date
and authenticity.
The work on Archaic and Classical literature
carried out at Alexandria led to the formation of
the “canon”: the Alexandrian scholars selected the
most representative authors for each genre and it
is their selection that has shaped our classical
tradition.
Of course Homer was the most studied author
at Alexandria. First, he was the basis of Greek
paideia and hence was considered “the poet” par
excellence (῾ο ποιητήϚ, as Homer was called in
antiquity) (see EDUCATION, HOMER IN). Second,
because of the peculiar form of transmission –
oral recitations – the text of Homer was much
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more in need of scholarly attention and proper
recension (DIORTHÔSIS) than any other Greek
author. At least three head librarians produced an
edition of Homer: Zenodotus of Ephesus,
Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aristarchus of
Samothrace. The main problem was to decide
which lines were genuine and which ones were
spurious. While Zenodotus eliminated from his
text many of the lines he considered spurious,
Aristophanes and especially Aristarchus, while
still deleting some securely spurious lines, rein-
troduced many of the lines omitted by Zenodotus
and limited themselves to mark them with an
OBELOS, a marginal line which alerted the reader
that the line could have been suspicious.
The Homeric edition of Aristarchus most
probably fixed the NUMERUS VERSUUM of the ILIAD
and the ODYSSEY, since such “fixed” text is attested
in Homeric PAPYRI from 150 BCE onwards. This text
is at the basis of our Homeric VULGATE.
After the end of the first phase of Alexandrian
scholarship, learned activity at Alexandria con-
tinued under the last Ptolemies and then the
Roman Empire. The most important scholars in
the 1st century BCE until the 1st century CE were
DIDYMUS, ARISTONICUS (who moved, however, and
worked in Rome), Tryphon, and Theon. They
continued the philological activity on Greek
authors, often collecting and organizing the work
done by the previous generation of scholars.
Thus, even if they sometimes lacked originality,
they have the great merit of having saved much of
the work done by their predecessors, Aristarchus
in particular (see SCHOLARSHIP, ANCIENT).
In the 2nd century CE at Alexandria a new dis-
cipline reached full bloom: the art of grammar
(technê grammatikê), especially through the work
of Apollonius Dyscolus, who wrote the first trea-
tise on Greek syntax, and of his son HERODIAN,
who worked on prosody and pathology (i.e., the
study of changes in phonetics and morphology of
original linguistic forms).
Even though the lexica, commentaries, and
editions of the Alexandrians are not preserved by
direct tradition, many fragments of their work
have been preserved by later sources such as SCHO-
LIA, lexica, and other exegetical texts. In particular,
Aristarchus’ scholarship on Homer has been pre-
served, via the VIERMÄNNERKOMMENTAR, by Homeric
scholia (10th century onwards), the Homeric
commentaries of EUSTATHIUS of Thessaloniki
(12th century), and the Byzantine Etymologica
(EGen., EM, EGud., Ps Zon., dated from the 9th
to the 13th centuries) (see SCHOLARSHIP,
BYZANTINE). The analysis of this material, together
with anonymous texts on papyrus (lexica, scholia
minora, hupomnêmata, exegetical texts), gives
important information about the methodology
and principles adopted by the Alexandrian schol-
ars. We cannot reconstruct what an EKDOSIS or a
hupomnêmata looked like precisely, but we know
that the Alexandrians invented and used the so-
called critical SIGLA, signs that were put on the
margin of the literary text and had a specific
meaning for the reader of those texts. For exam-
ple, a line that was considered dubious was athe-
tized, that is, it remained in the text but was
marked with another sign, the obelos, a small
horizontal line on the left of the line itself (see
ATHETESIS). In order to produce a sound text, dif-
ferent readings offered by different Homeric cop-
ies gathered in the Library were often discussed
with the help of a rather advanced linguistic anal-
ysis; sometimes the scholar himself suggested a
proper EMENDATION for a corrupted passage.
Commentaries also contained discussions about
Homeric STYLE, CHARACTERIZATION, mythographical
topics, and realia. Aristophanes of Byzantium and
Aristarchus of Samothrace, who represent the
acme of Alexandrian scholarship, seem to be gen-
erally very prudent scholars who do not indulge
in emendations and tend to keep their exegesis
close to the text. In fact, one of the leading princi-
ples of Aristarchus was “to clarify Homer with
Homer” (῞Oμηρον ἐξ ῾Oμήρου σαϕηνίζειν as for-
mulated by Porphyry [on Il.  2.297;16 Schrader
1880–1882]). This means that the exegete should
not reinterpret the Homeric poems as he pleases
(for example, according to ALLEGORY or other
principles external to the poem itself); rather, he
should keep his analysis as close as possible to
what the poet wanted to express. If Homer has a
poetic license, which allows him to depart from
the general rule, in general he is consistent with
himself; therefore, anything in the poem that is
against internal consistency should be avoided or
eliminated by the philologist.
Alexandrian scholars of the 3rd to 2nd century
BCE used to define themselves as grammatikoi and
they are often labeled as “Alexandrian grammari-
ans” even now. The term, however, does not mean
“student of grammar” in the modern sense of the

word (a proper technê grammatikê, as explained
above, developed only later in the 1st to 2nd cen-
tury CE) but has a wider meaning. A grammatikos
is a “philologist” and a “literary critic,” as clarified
by the definition of Dionysius Thrax (1.1–6), a
pupil of Aristarchus: for him, grammatikê is “an
experience (empeiria) of what is for the most part
said by poets and writers” and consists of six
parts: (1) reading aloud according to prosody;
(2) interpretation of the poetic figures (see
RHETORICAL FIGURES OF SPEECH); (3) explanation of
words and contents; (4) analysis of the ETYMOL-
OGY; (5) calculation of analogy; (6) judgment of
poems. The latter is the final goal of the
Alexandrian scholar, who is able to judge and
hence to select the literary canon that has
imprinted all our subsequent tradition.
See also TEXT AND TRANSMISSION.
References and Suggested Readings
An introduction to Alexandria, the Museum, and the
Library can be found in Fraser 1972, vol. 1, 447–479.
The best survey on Alexandrian scholarship,
Alexandrian scholars, and their methodology is still
Pfeiffer 1968. Richardson 1994 focuses on the
Aristotelian background of Alexandrian scholarship,
while the history of textual traditions and the role of
Alexandrian scholars are covered by Pasquali 1952,
200–247, and, on Homer, by M. L. West 2001, 33–85.
More technical studies on the methodology of
Alexandrian scholars, and on what their “fragments”
are and how we should approach and work on them,
3
are Montanari 1997 and 1998. The highly controver-
sial theories of van Thiel 1992 and 1997, along with
the criticism of Schmidt 1997, are also worth
reading.
Fraser, P. M. 1972. Ptolemaic Alexandria. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Montanari, F. 1997. “The Fragments of Hellenistic
Scholarship,” in G. Most (ed.), Collecting Fragments.
Fragmente sammeln. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 273–288.
Montanari, F. 1998. “Zenodotus, Aristarchus and the
Ekdosis of Homer,” in G. Most (ed.), Editing Texts.
Texte edieren. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1–21.
Pasquali, G. 1952 [1934]. Storia della tradizione e crit-
ica del testo. 2nd ed. Florence: Le Monnier.
Pfeiffer, R. 1968. History of Classical Scholarship from
the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age.
Oxford: Clarendon Press..
Richardson, N. J. 1994. “Aristotle and Hellenistic
Scholarship,” in F. Montanari (ed.), La Philologie
grecque à l’époque hellénistique et romaine.
Vandoeuvres, Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 7–38
Schmidt, M. 1997. “Variae lectiones oder Parallelstellen:
Was notierten Zenodot und Aristarch zu Homer?,”
ZPE 115: 1–12.
van Thiel, H. 1992. “Zenodot, Aristarch und andere,”
ZPE 90: 4–14.
van Thiel, H. 1997. “Der Homertext in Alexandria.”
ZPE 115: 13–36.
West, M. L. 2001. Studies in the Text and Transmission
of the Iliad. Munich and Leipzig: Saur.
FRANCESCA SCHIRONI