The Alexandrine grammarians were philologists and textual scholars who flourished in Hellenistic Alexandria

History of Alexandria

The history of Alexandria dates back to the city's founding, by Alexander the Great, in 332 BC. It was the seat of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, and quickly became one of the greatest cities of the Hellenistic world — second only to Rome in size and wealth. It fell to the Arabs in 641 AD,...

 in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, when that city was the center of Hellenistic culture. Despite the name, the work of the Alexandrine grammarians was never confined to grammar, and in fact did not include it, since grammar in the modern sense did not exist until the first century B.C. In Hellenistic and later times, "grammarian" refers primarily to scholars concerned with the restoration, proper reading, explanation and interpretation of the classical texts, including literary criticism. However unlike Atticism

Atticism

Atticism was a rhetorical movement that began in the first quarter of the 1st century BC; it may also refer to the wordings and phrasings typical of this movement, in contrast with spoken Greek, which continued to evolve in directions guided by the common usages of Hellenistic Greek.Atticism was...

, their goal was not to reform the Greek in their day.

The Alexandrine grammarians undertook the critical revision of the works of classical Greek literature

Ancient Greek literature

Ancient Greek literature refers to literature written in the Ancient Greek language until the 4th century.- Classical and Pre-Classical Antiquity :...

, particularly those of 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...

, and their studies were profoundly influential, marking the beginning of the ancient Western grammatical tradition. From the beginning, a typical custom, and methodological bias of this tradition was to focus their commentary and analysis on de-contestualized sentences.

Notable members

Important members of the Alexandrian grammarians included:

• Zenodotus of Ephesus (fl. ca. 280 BCE): First superintendent of the Library of Alexandria
  Library of Alexandria
  The Royal Library of Alexandria, or Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world. It flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a major center of scholarship from its construction in the...
  
   and editor of Homer.
• Callimachus
  Callimachus
  Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
  
   (fl. ca. 260 BCE): Poet, critic, and scholar who cataloged the Library.
• Aristophanes of Byzantium
  Aristophanes of Byzantium
  Aristophanes of Byzantium was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus,...
  
   (ca. 257 BCE–ca. 185 BCE): Editor of Homer and inventor of the polytonic orthography of classical Greek.
• 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...
  
   (ca. 220–ca. 143 BCE): Responsible for the most important critical edition of the Homeric poems.
• Dionysius Thrax
  Dionysius Thrax
  Dionysius Thrax was a Hellenistic grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. His place of origin was not Thrace as the epithet Thrax denotes, but probably Alexandria...
  
   (170 BCE–90 BCE): Homeric scholar and student of Aristarchus, who did author a Greek grammar, although it did not discuss syntax.
• Didymus Chalcenterus
  Didymus Chalcenterus
  Didymus Chalcenterus , ca. 63 BCE to 10 CE, was a Hellenistic Greek scholar and grammarian who flourished in the time of Cicero and Augustus.- Life :...
  
  : (ca. 63 BCE–10 CE): Commentator on lyric and comic poets, who compiled and transmitted the work of his predecessors.