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Aspects of Scholarship and the Library in Ptolemaic Alexandria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Mostafa El-Abbadi

Extract

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In a papyrus fragment we have a passage of an Attic comedy of the third century B.C., The Phoenicides by Strato, in which the cook is represented as using archaic, Homeric words for common everyday things, and his exasperated master is obliged “to look through the books of Philitas for their meaning”. This is a farcical application of the new trend of research which the scholar Philitas of Cos initiated in language studies and introduced into Alexandria early in the third century B.C. This new movement took root in Alexandria and was maintained by a distinguished line of scholars, members of the Mouseion. The results of their research soon crossed over to the other shores of the Mediterranean. Thus we have the bitter and rather envious reaction of Timon of Phlius, a poet residing at Pella in Macedonia who, as the representative of a more conservative attitude, resented “modern” intellectual developments and attacked, not only contemporary Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, but also scholars of the Alexandrian Mouseion, “Many are feeding in populous Egypt, scribblers on papyrus, ceaselessly wrangling in the bird-cage of the Muses”.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 36 , Issue 141 , March 1988 , pp. 21 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 O. Guéraud and P. Jouguet, Un livre d'écolier du IIIe siècle avant J.C. 34; D.L. Page, Greek Literary Papyri (Loeb) I. 57 lines 42-44.

2 apud Athenaeus 22 D.

3 Strabo XIII 1, 54; Diogenes Laertius VIII. 15.

4 Tzetzes, Prolegomena to Aristophanes, apud Kaibel, Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, I, pp. 28-33.

5 Suidas, Vita Callimachi.

6 Iliad I 5 and apparatus criticus.

7 Iliad IV 48; IX 225; Odyssey VIII 98; also cf. Iliad I 424; IV 25°, 343, 344; IX 487; XXIII 48; Odyssey I 225; VIII 99; X 124.

8 Athenaeus, Epitome I. 12 C-F.

9 Aeschylus, Agam. 1242, 1593; Choeph. 483; Sophocles, Philoct. 957; Euripides, Cyclops 245. Cf Pfeiffer, HCS I, pp. 112-3.

10 Athenaeus, ibid.

11 Suetonius, De Grammaticis 10.

12 Strabo II 1, 5.

13 Strabo I 1, 10; I 2, 3.

14 Xenophanes, in Herodian II 16. 20; Plato, Republic 606 E.

15 Ex. Xenophanes, in Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos IX 193; Hera cleitus, in Diogenes Laertius IX I; Pythagoras, in Diog. Laert. VIII 21; Plato, Repu blic 377D-378 E, 398 A, 607 A. They attacked Homer on religious and moral grounds. The hostility towards Homer continued in the Hellenistic age as represent ed by Zoilus the Scourge of Homer (Homeromastix), cf. Vitruvius, De Architectura VII 8.

16 Geographici Graeci Minores, I 8; cf. Fraser, P.A. II, p. 775 n. 171.

17 Strabo I 2, 2; Suidas, Vita Eratostheni.

18 Diog. Laert. VII 4; 67; IX 72; Dio Chrysostom, Oration 53,4.

19 P. Oxy. 841.

20 For examples of unjustifiable emendations in the text of the Iliad VII 32 & X 349, see Fraser, P.A. II, p. 664 n. 102.

21 I.G. XIV 1183 C = Menandrea, 61 C, Koerte.

22 Menandrea 32, Koerte; cf. Sandys I, p. 130 n. 1.

23 As by Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle who wrote c. 300 B.C., in Sextus Empi ricus, Adversus Mathematicos III 3; F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristotles, I, 1944, Dicaearchus, fr. 78. On Aristotle's Didascaliae concerning the winning Attic drama which was based on abstracts of the Athenian archives, see Arist. Fragm. 618-630, ed V. Rose; cf. Trendelenburg, Grammaticorum Graecorum de arte tragica iudicio rum reliquiae, Bonn, 1867, p. 3f.

24 Trendelenburg (see previous note); Turner. Gr. Pap.

25 Pfeiffer, HCS I, pp. 197-202.

26 Discovered and published by E. Miller, Mélanges de littérature grecque, 1868, pp. 327-334; for other excerpts see H. Erbse, Untersuchungen zu den Attizistischen Lexika, Abhandlungen der Deutschen Akademie d. Wiss. zu Berlin, Phil.-Hist. Kl. Jg., 1949 Nr. 2, 1950 Nr. 5 et passim. cf. Pfeiffer, loc. cit.

27 P. Oxy. 2176, fr. I. I; Hipponax, ed. O. Masson, 1962, fr. 118, I & commentary.

28 P. Oxy. 1241, lines 11-15; Suidas, Vita Aristarchi; Athenaeus, 71 B; cf. Fraser, P.A. II, p. 477 nn. 126-7.

29 Suidas, Vita Aristarchi.

30 P. Amherst II 12 (3rd A.D.).

31 cf. Pfeiffer, HCS I, p. 226.

32 Porphyrius, Quaest. Homer., p. 297. 16, ed. Schroeder; J. Bidez, Vie de Porphy re, 1913, pp. 31 ff.

33 J.A. Davidson, Homeric Criticism, in Companion to Homer, 1963, pp. 220 ff.

34 Cicero, Ad Atticum, XVI, II. 2.

35 Quintilian X. I. 54.

36 Suidas, Vita Deinarchi; Vita Pytheae.

37 Cicero, Academica II. 73, assigned certain Stoic philosophers to the fifth class (quintae classis).

38 Notice in Homer, Iliad IV 194 & 204, Machaon son of Asclepios, the physi cian, is also called Asclepiades. SEG XVI 326 (c. 360 B.C.) a decree of the guild of Asclepiadae of Cos and Cnidus erected at Delphi; Galen X 5-6.

39 Fraser, P.A., I, p. 347.

40 Ibid, p. 357 & notes.

41 Polybius XII 25 d 3,4.

42 Galen XIV 683.

43 Celsus, Proem. 10; Galen (last note).

44 On the empirical doctrine, cf. Deichgraeber, Die griechischen Empiriker, 2nd ed. 1965, pp. 292 ff.; Fraser P.A. I, p. 359f.

45 Galen XVIII a 735, praises his personal integrity as a doctor; Celsus VII 7, 68; Caelius Aurelianus, Acut. Morb. III 17, 142 (ed. Drabkin).

46 Walzer, Galen, On Medical Experience, Oxford, 1944, gives an English trans lation of the Arabic text.

47 P. Sattler, Gr. Pap. u. Ostr. der Heid. Papyrus-Samml., herausg. von der Heid. Akad. der Wiss. Phil-Hist. Kl. 3 (1963), p. 12, Nr. 2 (215-213 B.C.).

48 Herodotus II 84.

49 UPZ 148 = Rémondon, "Problèmes du bilinguisme dans l'Égypte lagide", Chronique d'Égypte 39 (1964), pp. 126-146.

50 See note 28.

51 As suggested by Fraser, P.A. I, p. 359.

52 Ivor Thomas, History of Greek Mathematics, pp. 154-6 & 488.

53 Suidas, Vita Apollonii.

54 Vitruvius, De Architectura, IX, VIII, 2.

55 One Chrysermus in the second century B.C., Inscriptions de Delos 1525, pro bably ancestor of another of the first century B.C., Sextus Empiricus, Hyp. Pyrr. (Outline of Pyrrhonism) I. 84. (Loeb).

56 Strabo XIV 5, 13.

For background reading of basic studies and data on Alexandrian scholarship in general the reader may consult the following works:

Fraser, Peter M. Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols., Oxford, 1972.

Pfeiffer, Rudolf. History of Classical Scholarship, 2 vols. Oxford 1968-1976. Sandys, Sir John Edwin. A History of Classical Scholarship, 3 vols., Cambridge, 1906-8, reprinted 1968.

Turner, Eric G. Greek Papyri: An Introduction, Oxford, 1968.

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. History of Classical Scholarship, 2nd ed. Teubner, 1927, reprinted 1959; translated from the German by Alan Harris, with introduction and notes by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, London, Duckworth, 1982.