Aristophanes of Byzantium

Aristophanes of Byzantium (Ancient Greek: Ἀριστοφάνης ὁ Βυζάντιος Aristophánēs ho Buzántios; Byzantium c. 257 BC – Alexandria c. 185–180 BC), not to be confused with Aristophanes of Athens, was a Hellenistic Greek scholar, critic and grammarian. He is especially known for his studies of ancient stories, like those told by Homer, as well as other important writers such as Pindar and Hesiod.

Aristophanes moved to Alexandria where he studied under famous teachers including Zenodotus, Callimachus, and Dionysius Iambus. When he was sixty years old, he became the head librarian of the famous Library of Alexandria. Many smart students learned from him, such as Callistratus, Aristarchus of Samothrace, and maybe Agallis. After Aristophanes, another scholar named Apollonius "The Classifier" took over his role, not to be confused with Apollonius of Rhodes, an earlier head librarian of Alexandria. Later, Aristophanes' student, Aristarchus of Samothrace, became the sixth head librarian at the great Library of Alexandria.

Work

Aristophanes was the first to say that the "Precepts of Chiron" was not written by Hesiod.

Inventions

Accent system

Aristophanes helped create a system of accents for Greek words. This made it easier to say old Greek poems and stories correctly, especially as Greek was being used by many different people after Alexander’s travels.

Punctuation

He also made one of the earliest kinds of punctuation around 200 BC. He used small dots to show where to pause when reading out loud. A dot in the middle (·) showed a short pause, like our modern comma. A dot at the bottom (.) showed a longer pause, like a colon or semicolon. For very long pauses, he used a dot near the top of the line (^·). He even used a symbol that looked like ⊤ for special marks.

Lexicography

Aristophanes collected special and old words. He worked mostly on poems, especially those by Homer, who was taught by his teacher Zenodotus. He also worked on writings by Hesiod, poets, and even arranged Plato’s talks into groups. He made shorter versions of some of Aristotle’s animal books. Many of his ideas about plays by Aristophanes and other writers have been kept. He wrote about unusual words and expressions, and even made a book about a famous old saying, though only a tiny piece about shellfish from it remains today.

Surviving works

Only small pieces of Aristophanes’ many writings have survived. These pieces were kept in comments by later writers, called scholia, and in short introductions to Greek plays. A recent collection of what remains was put together by William J. Slater.