The Alexandrine grammarians were

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

s and textual scholars who flourished in Hellenistic Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, when that city was the center of

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

culture. Despite the name, the work of the Alexandrine grammarians was never confined to

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

, and in fact did not include it, since grammar in the modern sense did not exist until the first century BC. In Hellenistic and later times, '' grammarian'' refers primarily to scholars concerned with the restoration, proper reading, explanation and interpretation of the classical texts, including literary criticism. However unlike Atticism, their goal was not to reform the Greek in their day. The Alexandrine grammarians undertook the critical revision of the works of classical

Greek literature Greek literature () dates back from the ancient Greek literature, beginning in 800 BC, to the modern Greek literature of today. Ancient Greek literature was written in an Ancient Greek dialect, literature ranges from the oldest surviving writte ...

, particularly those of

Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...

, and their studies were profoundly influential, marking the beginning of the Western grammatical tradition. From the beginning, a typical custom, and methodological bias of this tradition was to focus their commentary and analysis on de-contextualized sentences.

Notable members

Important members of the Alexandrian grammarians included: *

Zenodotus of Ephesus Zenodotus ( grc-gre, Ζηνόδοτος) was a Greek grammarian, literary critic, Homeric scholar, and the first librarian of the Library of Alexandria. A native of Ephesus and a pupil of Philitas of Cos, he lived during the reigns of the first ...

(fl. c. 280 BCE): First superintendent of the Library of Alexandria and editor of Homer. *

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 ...

(fl. c. 260 BCE): Poet, critic, and scholar who cataloged the Library. * Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 257 BCE – c. 185 BCE): Editor of Homer and inventor of the

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 ...

of classical Greek. *

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 ...

(c. 220 – c. 143 BCE): Responsible for the most important critical edition of the Homeric poems. *

Dionysius Thrax Dionysius Thrax ( grc-gre, Διονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ ''Dionýsios ho Thrâix'', 170–90 BC) was a Greek grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. He was long considered to be the author of the earliest grammatical text on the G ...

(170 BCE – 90 BCE): Homeric scholar and student of Aristarchus, who did author a Greek grammar, although it did not discuss syntax. *

Didymus Chalcenterus Didymus Chalcenterus (Latin; Greek: , ''Dídymos Chalkéderos'', "Didymus Bronze-Guts"; c. 63 BC – c. AD 10), was an Ancient Greek scholar and grammarian who flourished in the time of Cicero and Augustus. Life The epithet "Bronze-Guts" came f ...

: (c. 63 BCE – 10 CE): Commentator on lyric and comic poets, who compiled and transmitted the work of his predecessors.

Notes

References

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Alexandrine Grammarians * Ancient Greek grammarians Lexicographers