Apollonius, also called "the Sophist", was a famous grammarian, who probably lived towards the end of the 1st century AD and taught in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 in the time of Tiberius

Tiberius

Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...

. He was born in Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

, the son of another grammarian, Archibius.

He was the author of a Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

ic lexicon

Lexicon

In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...

 (Λεξεις Ὁμηρικαι), the only work of this kind existent today. His chief authorities were Aristarchus of Samothrace

Aristarchus of Samothrace

Aristarchus of Samothrace was a grammarian noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the librarian of the library of Alexandria and seems to have succeeded his teacher Aristophanes of Byzantium in that role.He established the most historically important critical...

 and Apion

Apion

Apion , Graeco-Egyptian grammarian, sophist and commentator on Homer, was born at the Siwa Oasis, and flourished in the first half of the 1st century AD....

's Homeric glossary (although some sources cite Apion as a disciple of Apollonius). The surviving text of this lexicon is an epitome

Epitome

An epitome is a summary or miniature form; an instance that represents a larger reality, also used as a synonym for embodiment....

, that is, it is a shortened summary of the original. In the original version, Apollonius apparently supplied at least one quotation in each entry.

It was edited for the first time by Villoison (1773, 2 vol. in-quarto) from a manuscript of Saint Germain, and also by I. Bekker (1833).