Apion
Apion, also called Apion Pleistoneices and Apion Mochthos was a grammarian and sophist in first century Egypt.
Biography
Apion was a Greek or Graeco-Egyptian scholar of Ptolemaic Egypt, born in the El Kargeh oasis. He studied under Didymus Chalcenterus and later succeeded Theon as head of the Alexandrian school. Apion gained recognition as a lecturer, speaking in Rome and elsewhere.In 40 CE, he was part of a delegation sent by the Greek community of Alexandria to the Roman Emperor Gaius following anti-Jewish riots. The delegation intended to prevent the Emperor from granting again the rights the Jews of Alexandria had held previously and Apion argued that the Jews were unpatriotic as they did not rightly honoured the Emperor. Apion further implied that the Jews took an oath to show no goodwill to gentiles and perpetrated the blood libel that Jews secretly sacrified humans in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Jewish historian Josephus criticized Apion extensively in Book 2 of his polemic Against Apion.
Apion wrote extensively about his native Egypt. Details of his life come almost exclusively from other ancient sources, most prominently Pliny the Elder, Aulus Gellius, as well as the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia the Suda. According to Aulus Gellius, wrote a version of the folk tale "Androcles and the Lion". Pliny related that Apion claimed to have summoned the spirit of Homer to determine the poet’s origins. He wrote an alphabetic glossary of Homeric themes—a work, like others of its kind, based on the scholarship of Aristarchus of Samothrace ; it survives only in fragments and through the writings of Apollonius the Sophist.
According to the Suda, he was dubbed "Mochthos", a word meaning "toil, labor, hardship, or trouble" in reference to his tireless work habits.
Works
Apion wrote several works, none of which has survived. The well-known story "Androclus and the Lion", which is preserved in Aulus Gellius, is from his work: Aegyptiaca/Αἰγυπτιακά . The surviving fragments of his work are printed in the Etymologicum Gudianum, ed. Sturz, 1818.- Upon Homer, whose poems seem to have formed the principal part of his studies, for he is said not only to have made the best recension of the text of the poems, but to have written explanations of phrases and words in the form of a dictionary, and investigations concerning the life and native country of the poet. The best part of his Λέξεις Ὁμηρικαί are supposed to be incorporated in the Homeric Lexicon of Apollonius. Apion's labors upon Homer are often referred to by Eustathius and other grammarians.
- A work on Egypt consisting of five books, which was highly valued in antiquity, for it contained descriptions of nearly all the remarkable objects in Egypt. It also contained numerous attacks upon the Jews.
- A work in praise of Alexander the Great.
- Histories of separate countries.
- On the celebrated glutton Apicius.
- On the language of the Romans.
- De metallica disciplina.
- Androclus and the Lion and The Dolphin near Dicaearchia. The greatest fragments of the works of Apion are the story about Androclus and his lion, and about the dolphin near Dicaearchia.