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1. A celebrated Alexandrian grammarian of the time of Cicero and the emperor Augustus. He
was a disciple or rather a follower of the school of Aristarchus (de Aristarchi stud. Homer. p. 18,
&c.), and is said to have been the son of a dealer in salt fish. He was the teacher of
Apion, Heracleides Ponticus, and other eminent men of the time.
Didymus is commonly distinguished from other grammarians of the name of Didymus by the
surname
The sum total of his works is stated by Athenaeus (iv. p. 139) to have been 3,500, and by
Seneca (Ep. 88) 4000. (Comp.
The most interesting among his productions, all of which are lost, would have been those in which he treated on the Homeric poems, the criticism and interpretation of which formed the most prominent portion of his literary pursuits.
The greater part of what we now possess under the name of the minor Scholia on Homer,
which were at one time considered the work of Didymus, is taken from the several works which
Didymus wrote upon Homer. Among them was one on the Homeric text as constituted by
Aristarchus (
But the studies of Didymus were not confined to Homer, for he wrote also commentaries on
many other poets and prose writers of the classical times of Greece. We have mention of
works of his on the lyric poets, and especially on Bacchylides (Theophyl. Ep. 8; Ammon. s. v.
Praef. ad Schol. Pind. p. xvii. &c.) The same is the case with the
extant scholia on Sophocles. (Richter, de Aeschyli, Sophoclis, et Euripidis
interpretibus Graecis, p. 106, &c.) In the scholia on Aristophanes, too, Didymus
is often referred to, and we further know that he wrote commentaries on Euripides, Ion,
Phrynichus (s.
v. Κόρσακις ;
The Greek orators,
Besides these numerous commentaries, we have mention of a work on the phraseology of the
tragic poets (s. v.
ad Apollon. Rhod. 1.1139, 4.1058.) A
third work of the same class was on words of ambiguous or uncertain meaning, and consisted
of at least seven books; and a fourth treated on false or corrupt expressions.
He further published a collection of Greek proverbs, in thirteen books (Corpus Paroemiogr. Graec. i. p. xiv.)
A work on the laws of Solon is mentioned by Plutarch (
Didymus appears to have been acquainted even with Roman literature, for he wrote a work in
six books against Cicero's treatise " de Re Publica," (Ammian. Marcell. 22.16), which
afterwards induced Suetonius to write against Didymus. (Suid. s. v.
In the collection of the Geoponica there are various extracts bearing the name of Didymus, from which it might be inferred that he wrote on agriculture or botany; but it is altogether uncertain whether those extracts belong to our Alexandrian grammarian, or to some other writer of the same name.
It is very probable that, with Suidas, we ought to distinguish from our grammarian a naturalist Didymus.
The naturalist Didymus possibly may be the same as the one who wrote a
The
See Gräfenhan, Gesch. der Klass. Philol. im Alterthum, i. p. 405,
&c.