Aristarchus of Samothrace
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- For the astronomer, see Aristarchus of Samos. For other men of this name, see Aristarchus.
Aristarchus (Ἀρίσταρχος, 220? - 143 BC?), from the Greek island of Samothrace, was a grammarian and is 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 edition of the Homeric poems, and he is said to have applied his teacher's accent system to it, pointing the texts with a careful eye for metrical correctness. It is likely that he or, more probably, another predecessor at Alexandria, Zenodotus, was responsible for the division of the Iliad and Odyssey into twenty-four books each. According to the Suda, Aristarchus wrote 800 treatises (ὑπομνήματα) on various topics, all lost but for fragments preserved in the various Scholia.
Accounts of his death vary, though they agree that it was during the persecutions of Ptolemy VIII Physcon. One account has him, having contracted incurable edema, starving himself to death while in exile on Cyprus.
The historical connection of his name to literary criticism has created the term aristarch for someone who is a judgmental critic.
