classical scholarship
classical scholarship, the study, in all its aspects, of ancient Greece and Rome. In continental Europe the field is known as “classical philology,” but the use, in some circles, of “philology” to denote the study of language and literature—the result of abbreviating the 19th-century “comparative philology”—has lent an unfortunate ambiguity to the term. During the 19th century, Germans evolved the concept of Altertumswissenschaft (“science of antiquity”) to emphasize the unity of the various disciplines of which the study of the ancient world consists. Broadly speaking, the province of classical scholarship is in time the period between the 2nd millennium bc and ad 500 and in space the area covered by the conquests and spheres of influence of Greece and Rome at their widest extent.
This article surveys the history of classical scholarship thus defined from antiquity until the late 20th century.
Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Until the Renaissance, Greek scholarship in the East and Latin scholarship in the West tended to follow different courses, and it is therefore convenient to treat them separately during this period.
Greek scholarship
Beginnings
Greek epic poetry was recited in early times by professional performers known as rhapsodists, or rhapsodes, who sometimes offered interpretations of the works as well. In the 6th century bc Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have “searched out Homer’s poetry and life and date,” to have offered an allegorical interpretation of the battle of the gods in the 20th book of the Iliad, and to have been cited for a variant in Homer’s text. The Sophists of the 5th century bc—paid writers, lecturers, and teachers such as Protagoras, Prodicus, Gorgias, and Hippias—gave ethical instruction in the form of the exposition of poetry, particularly that of Homer, which from this time formed the staple of Greek education. Some of them were interested in etymology, phonetics, the exact meanings of words, correct diction, and the classification of the parts of speech. Hippias laid the foundations of ancient chronography by making a list of victors in the Olympic Games, and Alcidamas (c. 400 bc) wrote a book on Homer. However, the efforts of the Sophists in this direction, considerable as they were, had a more or less casual and arbitrary character.
Plato (c. 428/427–348/347 bc) strongly resisted the claim that the poets were reliable interpreters of religion and morality. In his dialogue Cratylus he rejected the theory that the study of words can reveal the meaning of things, insisting that things themselves must be studied. Plato’s pupil Aristotle (384–322 bc) defended poetry against his master; he valued highly the Iliad and the Odyssey, which from his time were regarded (together with the mock-epic Margites) as the genuine works of an individual Homer. He took a similar view of tragedy, which he believed effected a purification (katharsis) of the emotions upon which it played. Aristotle wrote about linguistic, dramatic, and other problems in Homer, refuting such detractors of the poet as Zoilus, compiled lists of Olympic and Pythian victors, collected details about the Athenian tragic and comic festivals, and supplemented his Politics with a collection of 158 studies of the constitutions of various Greek states. He also carried further the discussion of the constituent parts of a sentence and discussed the nature of synonyms, compounds, and rare words in early poetry.
The school of Aristotle, known as the Lyceum, or Peripatos, continued to make this kind of learned work an adjunct to its philosophical activities. Aristotle’s successor, Theophrastus (c. 372–c. 287 bc), collected the opinions of earlier philosophers. Dicaearchus (flourished c. 320 bc) wrote about the life of Greece, and Aristoxenus (flourished late 4th century bc) about the history and the theory of music. Heracleides Ponticus (c. 390–c. 322 bc) wrote one book on Archilochus and Homer and another on the dates of Homer and Hesiod. Clearchus collected proverbs, and Demetrius of Phaleron fables. All these philosophers were guided by Aristotle’s teleological concept of intellectual activity, according to which philosophy is the culminating element of civilization. A 4th-century commentary on an Orphic poem, discovered in 1963 on a papyrus from a grave in Derveni, Macedonia, deserves mention as the earliest known commentary on a text; it is not a linguistic commentary but offers an allegorical interpretation that is doubtless very different from what the poet had intended.
Library of Alexandria
During the Hellenistic Age (usually reckoned to extend from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 bc to the 1st century ad) scholarship flourished nowhere more than in the great city of Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemies, the kings of Egypt. Early in the 3rd century bc Ptolemy I founded the famous Mouseion (Museum) of Alexandria, a community of learned men organized along the lines of a religious cult and headed by a priest of the Muses; part of the Museum was a splendid library that became the most celebrated of the ancient world. In its establishment the king is said to have had the assistance of the eminent Peripatetic scholar and statesman Demetrius of Phaleron, who left Athens about 300 bc; unfortunately, the evidence about the part he played is scanty and unreliable. The Museum community included both poets and scholars, as well as several individuals who combined these pursuits. From the time of the poet-scholar Philetas, or Philitas (c. 330–c. 270 bc), the tutor of Ptolemy II, the scholars there were much concerned with the collection and interpretation (glossae) of rare poetic words. Philetas’ pupil Zenodotus of Ephesus (c. 325–260 bc) was the first librarian at Alexandria; using the manuscripts collected for the Library but also trusting to his own judgment, sometimes in a manner that seemed to later critics dangerously subjective, he made the first critical edition of Homer, marking passages of doubtful authenticity with critical signs in the margins. Zenodotus also edited Pindar and Anacreon and perhaps other lyric poets; at about the same time the epic and elegiac poet Alexander Aetolus is said to have corrected the text of the tragic poets, and the dramatic poet Lycophron the comic poets, but singularly little is known about these editions.
Somewhat later the great poet Callimachus (c. 305–c. 240 bc) compiled the Pinakes (“Tablets”), a vast catalogue raisonné of the chief authors, with biographical and bibliographical information. Callimachus is said to have written a book opposing the chief Peripatetic critic of the time, Praxiphanes, and is widely held to have criticized Peripatetic literary theory; but the scantiness of the evidence for this enjoins great caution.
Rather later the great geographer and mathematician Eratosthenes (c. 276–c. 194 bc), the third librarian, laid the foundations of a systematic chronography; more of his work would be known had it not been largely superseded in popular use by the 2nd-century chronicles of Apollodorus of Athens, which were a learned compilation but left out the important scientific and mathematical part.
Zenodotus’ editions of Homer and Hesiod were improved upon by the fourth librarian, Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 257–180 bc), who also edited the lyric poets, setting out their verses according to a systematic metrical theory; edited Aristophanes, Menander, and perhaps other comic poets; edited Sophocles and at least part of Euripides; and compiled useful summaries of the plots of plays with details of their productions. His Lexeis (“Readings”) was the most important of the numerous lexicographical works produced at this time, which included lexicons of particular authors and dialects; he also wrote some of the many treatises about literature that were now appearing.
Aristarchus of Samothrace (c. 217–145 bc), the sixth librarian, wrote not only monographs about poetry but also important commentaries on Homer, Pindar, and much of tragedy and comedy. Aristarchus was one of the many learned men who left Alexandria in consequence of the disastrous persecution of learning by Ptolemy VIII, from which that city’s standing as a great centre of learning never quite recovered. (It seems that the great library survived a fire set in Alexandria in 47 bc by Julius Caesar, whose army supported Cleopatra in a civil war; it was finally destroyed in ad 272 in the civil war under the Roman emperor Aurelian.)
Grammar and language study
During the 3rd century bc the Stoics, particularly Chrysippus (c. 280–c. 206 bc), made important contributions to the study of grammar, linked with the development of Stoic logic. Early in that century the Stoic Crates of Mallus emigrated to the court of King Eumenes II of Pergamum, which the Attalid dynasty had begun to make into a literary centre comparable with, though hardly equal to, Alexandria. Crates probably wrote commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey, characterized by the allegorical interpretation, by faith in the accuracy of Homer’s geography, and by grammatical rigour typical of the Stoic school. Under Stoic influence the Pergamenes tended to stress the element of anomaly in grammar, while the Alexandrians stressed the element of analogy; that is, the Alexandrians insisted on the natural, inherent orderliness of grammar, while the Pergamenes approached the subject as empiricists, being content to organize observations of actual usage into a body of knowledge. But the details of the alleged controversy over this matter are obscure and known largely from suspiciously late sources. If the extant grammar ascribed to Dionysius Thrax, a pupil of Aristarchus active about 120 bc, is genuine, then the Alexandrian school of grammar was by that time already considerably influenced by the Stoics.
During the 1st century bc, by which time Rome was beginning to be the chief centre of Greek scholarship, Philoxenus wrote on Greek dialects, among which he included Latin; he was the first scholar to be aware of the existence of monosyllabic roots. Under Augustus, Tryphon studied the language of prose and made the first study of syntax, the first vocabulary of the written language, and a classification of the so-called figures of speech. About the same time Didymus, known as Chalkenteros (“Brazen-Gutted”), incorporated into huge variorum editions much of the precious material contained in the many commentaries on literature compiled during the Hellenistic Age. This vastly productive scholar was lacking in critical judgment, but it is on his work that the later less extensive commentaries that in part survive depended. Under Tiberius, Theon studied the Hellenistic poets, as well as Pindar.
The 1st century ad saw the beginning of the “Attic Revival,” the movement to imitate the language and style of the classical Athenian writers, which lasted far into the Byzantine period with disastrous effects that have not even yet died away. This resulted in the production of many lexica and manuals meant to help people to write correct Attic, such as the works of Phrynichus, Moeris, and Pollux, all probably dating from the 2nd century ad. At that time much learned work was still being done, but it was becoming increasingly mechanical and repetitive. More and more of the chief writers survived only in selections; texts were being produced, often with commentaries, but these derived mainly from the stores of learning accumulated in the past. However, under Hadrian, Apollonius Dyscolus produced a treatment of syntax that acquired great authority, and his son Herodianus produced the standard treatise on accentuation; they were the last known producers of important original work on grammar.
Christian versus classical scholarship
Christianity proved less hostile to pagan culture than might have been expected. From the 2nd century on, Church Fathers such as Justin, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen used an impressive knowledge of pagan literature to debate with pagan philosophers on equal terms. Prominent on the pagan side was the Neoplatonist Porphyry (c. 234–c. 305). Besides his published attacks on Christianity, he wrote commentaries on Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Plotinus. Even after the triumph of Christianity in 313 under Constantine the Great, pagan and Christian scholars often attended one another’s lectures. The pagan Libanius of Antioch, the most celebrated rhetor of the 4th century and author of the surviving hypotheses of the orations of Demosthenes, taught Theodore of Mopsuestia, St. John Chrysostom, and probably also St. Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus. Basil (c. 329–379) wrote a treatise on the value of pagan literature in which he recommends at least a passing acquaintance with the pagan classics, but he and the other leading Christian authors of his time possessed a good deal more than this. Theodore (c. 350–428/429), bishop of Mopsuestia and leader of the school of Antioch, applied what could be called pagan methods of criticism to the Bible by using his knowledge of history and language to illuminate passages of Scripture. Members of the Christian school of Gaza in the 5th and 6th centuries even wrote dialogues modeled on those of Plato. The school’s leading member, Procopius, invented the catena (“chain”), a commentary on a book of the Bible consisting of a compilation of excerpts from earlier commentaries—something obviously suggested by the variorum editions of classical authors. Notes based on the learned commentaries of the Hellenistic Age now came to be written into the margins of manuscripts; to these scholia is owed most of what is known of ancient scholarship.
The Neoplatonists of the 5th and 6th centuries produced commentaries on Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers, thus preserving many priceless fragments of earlier philosophical texts now lost. Grammatical work also continued: Proclus wrote a commentary on Hesiod’s Works and Days; Hesychius of Alexandria compiled a Greek lexicon that preserved vocabulary from the Homeric age up to his own time; and Orus contributed to the work on Greek orthography. Education even received some government support; the 4th-century rhetor Themistius described a plan for the creation of a government scriptorium to ensure the survival of important writers, and some 50 years later, in 425, Emperor Theodosius II is said to have set up a university at Constantinople.
The age of Justinian I (527–565) produced the antiquarian works of Johannes Lydus and the geographical gazetteer of Stephanus of Byzantium. The historians of that era, Procopius and Agathias, wrote in the classical tradition of historiography, publishing chronicles of warfare that weighed the influences on historical events of fate and divine retribution. But in 529 Justinian issued an edict closing the schools of pagan philosophy; some philosophical activity continued after that, but the edict marked an era of Christian intolerance of pagan scholarship. During the 7th century the Arab conquests cut off Syria, Palestine, and Egypt from Greek civilization. The Arab threat forced the Byzantine Empire to submit to the rule of vigorous but not well-educated emperors, some of whom were religious fundamentalists opposed to the use of images, or icons, which was a central feature of worship in the Eastern Church. The resulting Iconoclastic Controversy was a major factor in the creation of a dark age of Byzantine culture that lasted from about the middle of the 7th until the beginning of the 9th century.
