A founding father of the "art of philology," Aristarchus of
Samothrace (216-144 BCE) developed a sound, almost scientific
method of literary exegesis, making a profound contribution to
ancient scholarship. In his work on the text of Homer's Iliad, his
methods and principles inevitably informed, even reshaped, his
edition of the epic. The Best of the Grammarians, a systematic
study of the most famous grammarian in Alexandria, places
Aristarchus and his Iliadic scholia, or marginal annotations,
within the context and cultural environment of his own time.
Francesca Schironi presents a more robust picture of Aristarchus as
a scholar than anyone has offered previously. Based on her analysis
of over 4,300 fragments of his scholia, she reconstructs
Aristarchus' methodology and its relationship to earlier
scholarship, and especially to Aristotle, as well as the cultural
milieu in which he was immersed. In doing so, Schironi departs from
the standard commentary on individual fragments, and instead offers
a broad yet rigorously scholarly examination of how Aristarchus
worked. Combining the accuracy and detail of old-school
philological works on individual fragments with a big-picture study
enabling the identification of recurrent patterns and
methodological trends across Aristarchus' work, this volume
represents a new approach to scholarship in Alexandrian and
classical philology. It will be the go-to reference book on this
topic for many years to come, and will usher in a new way of
addressing the highly technical work of ancient scholars without
losing philological accuracy, shifting the focus from details of
individual fragments to the broader picture of how ancient scholars
approached literary texts, what drove their methodology, and what
contribution their work provided to those who came after them. This
book will be valuable to classicists and philologists interested in
scholarship on Aristarchus, Homer and Homeric criticism in
antiquity, the history of Greek culture, Hellenistic scholarship,
and ancient literary criticism.
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