Apollonius Dyscolus ( el, Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ Δύσκολος; reached his maturity sometime around 130 CE) is considered one of the greatest of the

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 ...

grammarians.

Life

Little is known of Apollonius Dyscolus, other than that he was born at

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, Alexandria ...

, son of Mnesitheus. The precise dates for his life are not known. His son

Aelius Herodianus Aelius Herodianus ( grc-gre, Αἴλιος Ἡρωδιανός) or Herodian (fl. 2nd century CE) was one of the most celebrated grammarians of Greco-Roman antiquity. He is usually known as Herodian except when there is a danger of confusion with t ...

, who wrote on

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

, appears to have moved to Rome at the time of

Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Latin: áːɾkus̠ auɾέːli.us̠ antɔ́ːni.us̠ English: ; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good ...

. From this it is inferred that his father must have been a contemporary of

Hadrian Hadrian (; la, Caesar Trâiānus Hadriānus ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. He was born in Italica (close to modern Santiponce in Spain), a Roman ''municipium'' founded by Italic settlers in Hispania B ...

, and may have spent a short period in Rome during the reign of

Antoninus Pius Antoninus Pius (Latin: ''Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius''; 19 September 86 – 7 March 161) was Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the Five Good Emperors from the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. Born into a senatoria ...

. One tradition holds that he was so poor that he could not afford papyri to write on, and was constrained to avail himself of

potsherd In archaeology, a sherd, or more precisely, potsherd, is commonly a historic or prehistoric fragment of pottery, although the term is occasionally used to refer to fragments of stone and glass vessels, as well. Occasionally, a piece of broken p ...

s to write down his thoughts. His monicker ''ho dúskolos'' signifying "the difficult" or "crabby/grouchy" may reflect the sour temper of someone reduced to eking out a living in extreme indigence. Various interpretations have been advanced arguing the nickname was expressive of his highly compressed, difficult style, or as illustrating his cantankerously disputatious manner, or as alluding to his habit of citing arcane words in contests with other grammarians, in order to perplex them. He died in poverty in what was formerly the royal quarter of the city of Alexandria.

Works

He was the founder of scientific

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

, and is styled by

Priscian Priscianus Caesariensis (), commonly known as Priscian ( or ), was a Latin grammarian and the author of the ''Institutes of Grammar'', which was the standard textbook for the study of Latin during the Middle Ages. It also provided the raw materia ...

''maximus auctor artis grammaticae'' ('the greatest authority on the science of grammar'), and ''grammaticorum princeps'' ('prince of grammarians'). He wrote extensively on the parts of speech. Of the twenty books named in the ''

Suda The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; grc-x-medieval, Σοῦδα, Soûda; la, Suidae Lexicon) is a large 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas (Σούδας) or Souidas ...

'',Suda α 3422
/ref> four are extant: on

, and three smaller treatises: on

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...

s, on conjunctions, and on

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...

s. One characteristic which was to influence later generations was Apollonius' deployment of philosophical concepts in grammatical analysis. The earlier Alexandrine grammatical tradition was familiar with distinctions such as that between ''

genos In ancient Greece, a ''genos'' (Greek: γένος, "race, stock, kin", plural γένη ''genē'') was a social group claiming common descent, referred to by a single name (see also Sanskrit "Gana"). Most ''gene'' were composed of noble families&md ...

'' and ''

eidos Eidos may refer to: * Eidos (philosophy), a Greek term meaning "form" "essence", "type" or "species". See Plato's theory of forms and Aristotle's theory of universals * Eidos plc, a British software company, which created video game publisher Eido ...

'', but these were not used in refining distinctions between the parts of speech. Apollonius drew on

Stoic Stoic may refer to: * An adherent of Stoicism; one whose moral quality is associated with that school of philosophy *STOIC, a programming language * ''Stoic'' (film), a 2009 film by Uwe Boll * ''Stoic'' (mixtape), a 2012 mixtape by rapper T-Pain *' ...

ontology In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...

to analyse the noun and the verb. Like his son,

, he had an enormous influence on all later grammarians.

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * * * * * * * *

External links

Apollonius Dyscolus
– a website dedicated to Apollonius. *
Grecae linguae dialecti, in scholae regiae westmonasteriensis usum (...) praefationem & appendicem ex Apollonii Dyscoli fragmento inedito
', J. F. Reitzius (ed.), Hgae-comitis, apud Joannem Neaulme, Biblipolam., 1738. *
Historiae commentitiae liber, sive historiae mirabiles
', Guilielmus Xyladrus, Joannes Meursius, Ludovicus Henricus Teucherus (ed.), Lipsiae in bibliopolio gleditschiano, 1792. *
De pronomine liber
',

Immanuel Bekker August Immanuel Bekker (21 May 17857 June 1871) was a German philologist and critic. Biography Born in Berlin, Bekker completed his classical education at the University of Halle under Friedrich August Wolf, who considered him as his most promi ...

(ed.), Berolini, in libraria scholae realis, 1813. *
De constructione orationis libri quatuor
',