The Best of the Grammarians

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.