DIDYMUS CHALCENTERUS

'Didymus Chalcenterus' (Latin; Greek ''Didymos chalkenteros'', "Didymus bronze-guts"), ca. 63 BCE to 10 CE, was a Hellenistic scholar and grammarian, of Egyptian birth, who flourished in the time of Cicero and Augustus.

Contents

Life

Works

Sources

Editions

See also

Further reading

Notes

References

Life

The surname "bronze-guts" came from his indefatigable industry: he was said to have written so many books that he was unable to recollect what he had written in earlier ones, and so often contradicted himself. (Athenaeus records that he wrote 3500 books; Seneca gives the figure of 4000.)^[1] As a result he acquired the additional nickname "book-forgetter".
He lived and taught in Alexandria and Rome, where he became the friend of Varro. He is chiefly important as having introduced Alexandrian learning to the Romans.

Works

He was a follower of the school of Aristarchus, and wrote a treatise on Aristarchus' edition of Homer entitled ''On Aristarchus' recension'' (), fragments of which are preserved in the Venetus A manuscript of the ''Iliad''.
He also wrote commentaries on many other Greek poets and prose authors. He is known to have written on Greek lyric poets, notably Bacchylides and Pindar, and on drama; the better part of the Pindar and Sophocles scholia originated with Didymus. The Aristophanes scholia also cite him often, and he is known to have written treatises on Euripides, Ion, Phrynichus,^[2] Cratinus, Menander,^[3] and many of the Greek orators including Demosthenes, Isaeus, Hypereides, Deinarchus, and others.
Besides these commentaries there are mentions of the following works, none of which survives:

★ ''On phraseology in tragedy'' (), which comprised at least 28 books^[4]

★ ''Comic phraseology'' (), of which Hesychius made much use^[5]

★ a third linguistic work on words of ambiguous or uncertain meaning, comprising at least seven books

★ a fourth linguistic work on false or corrupt expressions

★ a collection of Greek proverbs () comprising thirteen books, from which most of the proverbs in Zenobius' collection are taken^[6]

★ ''On the laws of Solon'' (), a work mentioned by Plutarch^[7]

★ A response to Cicero's ''De re publica'', comprising six books,^[8] which later induced Suetonius to write a counter-response^[9]
In addition there survive extracts on agriculture and botany,^[10] mention of a commentary on Hippocrates, and a completely surviving treatise ''On all types of marble and wood'' ().^[11] In view of the drastic difference in subject matter it is possible that these represent the work of a different Didymos.^[12]

Sources

Editions

★ Scholia on the ''Iliad'':
Erbse, H. 1969-88, ''Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem'', 7 vols. (Berlin)

★ Didymus' work reconstructed from the ''Iliad'' scholia:
Schmidt, M. 1964 [1854], ''Didymi Chalcenteri grammatici Alexandrini fragmenta quae supersunt omnia'', reprint (Amsterdam)

See also

★ Homeric scholarship

★ Venetus A

Further reading

★ Russell, H.A. 1948, "Old Brass-Guts", ''The Classical Journal'' 43.7: 431-432

Notes

1. Athenaeus 4.139; Seneca ''Letters'' 88. Cf. also Quintilian 1.9.19.
2. Athenaeus 9.371.
3. ''Etymol. Gud''. 338.25.
4. Macrobius ''Sat''. 5.18; Harpocration s.v. .
5. Hesychius, letter to Eulogius; cf. ''Etymologicum Magnum'' 492.53, scholia on Apollonius 1.1139 and 4.1058.
6. Schneidewin, ''Corpus Paroemiogr. Graec''. i.xiv.
7. Plutarch, ''Life of Solon'' 1.
8. Ammianus Marcellinus 22.16.
9. ''Suda'' s.v. .
10. Preserved in the ''Geoponica''.
11. Edited by Angelo Mai 1819 (Milan), as an appendix to the Iliadic fragments.
12. See Gräfenheim, ''Geschichte der klassische Philologie im Alterthum'' i.405, etc.

References

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