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Aristophanes of Byzantium

 

 
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Aristophanes (Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ) of Byzantium
Byzantium

Byzantium was an Ancient Greece city, which was founded by Greeks colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas or Byzantas ....
 (c. 257 BC–c. 185 BC/180 BC) was a Greek
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 scholar, critic
Critic

The word critic comes from the Greek language ' , "able to discern", which in turn derives from the word ' , meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation, or observation....
 and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship
Homeric scholarship

Homeric scholarship is the study of Homeric Epic poetry, especially the two large surviving epics, the Iliad and Odyssey. It is currently part of the academic discipline of classical studies, but the subject is one of the very oldest topics in all scholarship or science, and goes back to antiquity....
, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar
Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet.Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is by far the best preserved, and critics in antiquity tended to regard him as the greatest....
 and Hesiod
Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus
Zenodotus

Zenodotus , was a Greek language grammarian, literary critic, and Homeric scholarship. A native of Ephesus and a pupil of Philitas of Cos, he was the first librarian of the Library of Alexandria....
 and Callimachus
Callimachus

Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar of the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of ancient Egyptian Greeks Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes....
. He succeeded Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greeks mathematician, poet, sportsperson, geographer and astronomer. He made several discoveries and inventions including a system of latitude and longitude....
 as head librarian
Librarian

A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs....
 of the Library of Alexandria
Library of Alexandria

The Royal Library of Alexandria or Ancient Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest Great libraries of the ancient world....
 at the age of sixty.

Aristophanes is credited with the invention of the accent system used in Greek to designate pronunciation, as the tonal, pitched system of archaic and classical Greek was giving way (or had given way) to the stress-based system of koine
Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek....
.






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Aristophanes (Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ) of Byzantium
Byzantium

Byzantium was an Ancient Greece city, which was founded by Greeks colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas or Byzantas ....
 (c. 257 BC–c. 185 BC/180 BC) was a Greek
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 scholar, critic
Critic

The word critic comes from the Greek language ' , "able to discern", which in turn derives from the word ' , meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation, or observation....
 and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship
Homeric scholarship

Homeric scholarship is the study of Homeric Epic poetry, especially the two large surviving epics, the Iliad and Odyssey. It is currently part of the academic discipline of classical studies, but the subject is one of the very oldest topics in all scholarship or science, and goes back to antiquity....
, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar
Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet.Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is by far the best preserved, and critics in antiquity tended to regard him as the greatest....
 and Hesiod
Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus
Zenodotus

Zenodotus , was a Greek language grammarian, literary critic, and Homeric scholarship. A native of Ephesus and a pupil of Philitas of Cos, he was the first librarian of the Library of Alexandria....
 and Callimachus
Callimachus

Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar of the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of ancient Egyptian Greeks Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes....
. He succeeded Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greeks mathematician, poet, sportsperson, geographer and astronomer. He made several discoveries and inventions including a system of latitude and longitude....
 as head librarian
Librarian

A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs....
 of the Library of Alexandria
Library of Alexandria

The Royal Library of Alexandria or Ancient Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest Great libraries of the ancient world....
 at the age of sixty.

Aristophanes is credited with the invention of the accent system used in Greek to designate pronunciation, as the tonal, pitched system of archaic and classical Greek was giving way (or had given way) to the stress-based system of koine
Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek....
. This was also a period when Greek, in the wake of Alexander
Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great , also known as Alexander III of Macedon was an ancient Greeks King of Macedon . He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle....
's conquests, was beginning to act as a lingua franca for the Eastern Mediterranean (replacing various Semitic languages
Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
). The accents were designed to assist in the pronunciation of Greek in older literary works.

He also invented one of the first forms of punctuation
Punctuation

Punctuation is everything in written language other than the actual letters or numbers, including punctuation marks , Interword separation and indentation....
 in the 3rd century BCE; single dots
Interpunct

An interpunct is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin alphabet, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in written language....
 (distinctiones) that separated verses (colometry), and indicated the amount of breath needed to complete each fragment of text when reading aloud (not to comply with rules of grammar, which were not applied to punctuation marks until thousands of years later). For a short passage (a komma), a media distinctio dot was placed mid-level (·). This is the origin of the modern comma
Comma

A comma is a type of punctuation mark .Comma may also refer to:* Comma , a type of interval in music theory* Comma , a species of butterfly...
 punctuation mark, and its name. For a longer passage (a colon), a subdistinctio dot was placed level with the bottom of the text (.), similar to a modern colon
Colon (punctuation)

The colon is a punctuation mark, consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line....
 or semicolon
Semicolon

A semicolon is a conventional punctuation mark with several uses, mainly for pauses in sentences. The Italy printer Aldus Manutius the Elder established the practice of using the semicolon mark to separate words of opposed meaning, and to indicate interdependent statements....
, and for very long pauses (periodos), a distinctio point near the top of the line of text (·).

He died in Alexandria
Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
 around 185-180 B.C.

See also

  • Homeric scholarship
    Homeric scholarship

    Homeric scholarship is the study of Homeric Epic poetry, especially the two large surviving epics, the Iliad and Odyssey. It is currently part of the academic discipline of classical studies, but the subject is one of the very oldest topics in all scholarship or science, and goes back to antiquity....
  • Polytonic orthography


External links