Aristarchus
Could not find Aristarchi in Logeion dictionaries.
Aristarchi Proper-name noun: masculine nominative plural, Proper-name noun: masculine genitive singular, Proper-name noun: masculine vocative plural of Aristarchus
- a distinguisled critic of Alexandria, who animadverted with special severity upon the poetry of Homer, and contended that many of his verses were spurious, Cic. Fam. 3, 11; Ov. P. 3, 9, 24.—Appel. for any critic, Cic. Pis. 30: orationes meae, quarum tu Aristarchus es, id. Att. 1, 14.
- —Hence, Aristar-chēi, ōrum, m., the disciples, followers of Aristarchus, i.e. severe critics, Varr. L. L. 8, § 63 Müll.
- 1. uit Samos, ca. 310—230 v. Chr., astronoom in Alexandrië;
- 2. uit Samothrace, 217—145 v. Chr., grammaticus en criticus (v. Homerus) in Alexandrië; (meton.) strenge criticus [mearum orationum].
(Ἀρίσταρχος).
1. Is named with Peisander, Phrynichus, and Antiphon, as a principal leader of the "Four Hundred" (B. C. 411) at Athens, and is specified as one of the strongest anti-democratic partisans. (Thuc. 8.90.) On the first breaking out of the counter-revolution we find him leaving the council-room with Theramenes, and acting at Peiraeeus at the head of the young oligarchical cavalry (ib. 92); and on the downfall of his party, he took advantage of his office as strategus, and rode off with a party of the most barbarous of the foreign archers to the border fort of Oenoe, then besieged by the Boeotians and Corinthians. In concert with them, and under cover of his command, he deluded the garrison, by a statement of terms concluded with Sparta, into surrender, and thus gained the place for the enemy. (Ib. 98.) He afterwards, it appears, came into the hands of the Athenians, and was with Alexicles brought to trial and punished with death, not later than 406. (Xen. Hell. 1.7.28; Lycurg. c. Leocr. p. 164; Thirlwall, iv. pp. 67 and 73.) [A.H.C]
2. There was an Athenian of the name of Aristarchus (apparently a different person from the oligarchical leader of that name), a conversation between whom and Socrates is recorded by Xenophon. (Mem. 2.7.)
3. A Lacedaemonian, who in B. C. 400 was sent out to succeed Cleander as harmost of Byzantium. The Greeks who had accompanied Cyrus in his expedition against his brother Artaxerxes, had recently returned, and the main body of them had encamped near Byzantium. Several of them, however, had sold their arms and taken up their residence in the city itself. Aristarchus, following the instructions he had received from Anaxibius, the Spartan admiral, whom he had met at Cyzicus, sold all these, amounting to about 400, as slaves. Having been bribed by Pharnabazus, he prevented the troops from recrossing into Asia and ravaging that satrap's province, and in various ways annoyed and ill-treated them. (Xen. Anab. 7.2. §§ 4-7, 7.3. §§ 1-3, 7.6. §§ 13, 24.)
4. One of the ambassadors sent by the Phocaeans to Seleucus, the son of Antiochus the Great, B. C. 190. (Plb. 21.4.)
5. A prince or ruler of the Colchians, appointed by Pompey after the close of the Mithridatic war. (Appian, de Bell. Mith. 100.114.) [C.P.M]
(Ἀρίσταρχος), of Alexandria, the author of a work on the interpretation of dreams. (Ὀνειροκριτά, Artemid. 4.23.)
(Ἀρίσταρχος), the Chronographer, the author of a letter on the situation of Athens, and the events which took place there in the time of the Apostles, and especially of the life of Dionysius, the Areiopagite. (Hilduinus, Ep. ad Ludovicuma, quoted by Vossius, Hist. Graec. p. 400, &c. ed. Westermann.)
(Ἀρίσταρχος), the most celebrated Grammarian and critic in all antiquity, was a native of Samothrace. He was educated at Alexandria, in the school of Aristophanes of Byzantium, and afterwards founded himself a grammatical and critical school, which flourished for a long time at Alexandria, and subsequently at Rome also. Ptolemy Philopator entrusted to Aristarchus the education of his son, Ptolemy Epiphanes, and Ptolemy Physcon too was one of his pupils. (Athen. 2.71.) Owing, however, to the bad treatment which the scholars and philosophers of Alexandria experienced in the reign of Physcon, Aristarchus, then at an advanced age, left Egypt and went to Cyprus, where he is said to have died at the age of seventy-two, of voluntary starvation, because he was suffering from incurable dropsy. He left behind him two sons, Aristagoras and Aristarchus, who are likewise called grammarians, but neither of them appears to have inherited anything of the spirit or talents of the father.
The numerous followers and disciples of Aristarchus were designated by the names of οἱ Ἀριστάρχειοι or οἱ ἀπ̓ Ἀριστάρχου. Aristarchus, his master Aristophanes, and his opponent Crates of Mallus, the head of the grammatical school at Pergamus, were the most eminent grammarians of that period; but Aristarchus surpassed them all in knowledge and critical skill. Works
Aristarchus' whole life was devoted to grammatical and critical pursuits, with the view to explain and constitute correct texts of the ancient poets of Greece, such as Homer, Pindar, Archilochus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Ion, and others. His grammatical studies embraced everything, which the term in its widest sense then comprised, and he together with his great contemporaries are regarded as the first who established fixed principles of grammar, though Aristarchus himself is often called the prince of grammarians ὁ κορυφαῖος τῶν γραμματικῶν, or ὁ γραμματικώτατος).
Suidas ascribes to him more than 800 commentaries (ὑπομνήματα), while from an expression of a Scholiast on Horace (Hor. Ep. 2.1. 257) some writers have inferred, that Aristarchus did not write anything at all. Besides these ὑπομνήματα, we find mention of a very important work, περὶ ἀναλογίας, of which unfortunately a very few fragments only are extant. It was attacked by Crates in a work περί ἀνωμαλίας. (Gellius, 2.25.)
All the works of Aristarchus are lost, and all that we have of his consists of short fragments, which are scattered through the Scholia on the above-mentioned poets. These fragments, however, would be utterly insufficient to give us any idea of the immense activity, the extensive knowledge, and above all, of the uniform strictness of his critical principles, were it not that Eustathius, and still more the Venetian Scholia on Homer (first published by Villoison, Venice, 1788, fol.), had preserved such extracts from his works on Homer, as, notwithstanding their fragmentary nature, shew us the critic in his whole greatness.
As far as the Homeric poems are concerned, he above all things endeavoured to restore their genuine text, and carefully to clear it of all later interpolations and corruptions. He marked those verses which he thought spurious with an obelos, and those which he considered as particularly beautiful with an asterisk. It is now no longer a matter of doubt that, generally speaking, the text of the Homeric poems, such as it has come down to us, and the division of each poem into twenty-four raphsodies, are the work of Aristarchus; that is to say, the edition which Aristarchus prepared of the Homeric poems became the basis of all subsequent editions.
To restore this recension of Aristarchus has been more or less the great object with nearly all the editors of Homer, since the days of F. A. Wolf, a critic of a kindred genius, who first shewed the great importance to be attached to the edition of Aristarchus. Its general appreciation in antiquity is attested by the fact, that so many other grammarians, as Callistratus, Aristonicus, Didymus, and Ptolemaeus of Ascalon, wrote separate works upon it. In explaining and interpreting the Homeric poems, for which nothing had been done before his time, his merits were as great as those he acquired by his critical labours. His explanations as well as his criticisms were not confined to the mere detail of words and phrases, but he entered also upon investigations of a higher order, concerning mythology, geography, and on the artistic composition and structure of the Homeric poems. He was a decided opponent of the allegorical interpretation of the poet which was then beginning, which some centuries later became very general, and was perhaps never carried to such extreme absurdities as in our own days by the author of " Homerus."
The antiquity of the Homeric poems, however, as well as the historical character of their author, seem never to have been doubted by Aristarchus. he bestowed great care upon the metrical correctness of the text, and is said to have provided the works of Homer and some other poets with accents, the invention of which is ascribed to Aristophanes of Byzantium. It cannot be surprising that a man who worked with that independent critical spirit, had his enemies and detractors; but such isolated statements as that of Athenaeus (v. p. 177), in which Athenocles of Cyzicus is preferred to Aristarchus, are more than counterbalanced by others. A Scholiast on Homer (Hom. Il. 4.235) declares, that Aristarchus must be followed in preference to other critics, even if they should be right; and Panaetius (Athen. 14.634) called Aristarchus a μάντις, to express the skill and felicity with which he always hit the truth in his criticisms and explanations. Further Information
For further information see Matthesius, Dissertatio de Aristarcho Grammatico, Jena, 1725, 4to.; Villoison, Proleg. ad Apollon. Lex Hom. p. xv., &c., Proleg. ad Hom. Iliad. p. xxvi., &c.; and more especially F. A. Wolf, Prolegom. in Hom. p. ccxvi., &c., and Lehrs, De Aristarchi Studiis Homericis Regimont. Pruss. 1833, 8vo. [L.S]
(Ἀρίσταρχος).
1. A Greek Physician, of whom no particulars are known, except that he was attached to the court of Berenice, the wife of Antiochus Theos, king of Syria, B. C. 261-246 (Polyaen. Strateg. 8.50), and persuaded her to trust herself in the hands of her treacherous enemies.
2. Some medical prescriptions belonging to another physician of this name are quoted by Galen and Aetius, who appears to have been a native of Tarsus in Cilicia. (Gal. De Compos. Medicam. ec. Loc. 5.11, vol. xiii. p. 824.) [W.A.G]
(Ἀρίσταρχος), of Samos , one of the earliest astronomers of the Alexandrian school. We know little of his history, except that he was living between B. C. 280 and 264. The first of these dates is inferred from a passage in the μεγάλη σύνταξις of Ptolemy (3.2, vol. i. p. 163, ed. Halma), in which Hipparchus is said to have referred, in his treatise on the length of the year, to an observation of the summer solstice made by Aristarchus in the 50th year of the st Calippic period : the second from the mention of him in Plutarch (de Facie in Orbe Lunae), which makes him contemporary with Cleanthes the Stoic, the successor of Zeno. Works On the magnitudes and distances of the sun and moon (περὶ μεγεθῶν καὶ ἀποστημάτων ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης)
Aristarchus seems that he employed himself in the determination of some of the most important elements of astronomy; but none of his works remain, except a treatise on the magnitudes and distances of the sun and moon (περὶ μεγεθῶν καὶ ἀποστημάτων ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης). We do not know whether the method employed in this work was invented by Aristarchus (Suidas, s. v. φιλόσοφος, mentions a treatise on the same subject by a disciple of Plato); it is, however, very ingenious, and correct in principle. It is founded on the consideration that at the instant when the enlightened part of the moon is apparently bounded by a straight line, the plane of the circle which separates the dark and light portions passes through the eye of the spectator, and is also perpendicular to the line joining the centres of the sun and moon; so that the distances of the sun and moon from the eye are at that instant respectively the hypothenuse and side of a right-angled triangle. The angle at the eye (which is the angular distance between the sun and moon) can be observed, and then it is an easy problem to find the ratio between the sides containing it. But this process could not, unless by accident, lead to a true result; for it would be impossible, even with a telescope, to determine with much accuracy the instant at which the phaenomenon in question takes place; and in the time of Aristarchus there were no means of measuring angular distances with sufficient exactness. In fact, he takes the angle at the eye to be 83 degrees whereas its real value is less than a right angle by about half a minute only; and hence he infers that the distance of the sun is between eighteen and twenty times greater than that of the moon, whereas the true ratio is about twenty times as great, the distances being to one another nearly as 400 to 1. The ratio of the true diameters of the sun and moon would follow immediately from that of their distances, if their apparent (angular) diameters were known. Aristarchus assumes that their apparent diameters are equal, which is nearly true ; but estimates their common value at two degrees, which is nearly four times too great. The theory of parallax was as yet unknown, and hence, in order to compare the diameter of the earth with the magnitudes already mentioned, he compares the diameter of the moon with that of the earth's shadow in its neighbourhood, and assumes the latter to be twice as great as the former. (Its mean value is about 84'.) Of course all the numerical results deduced from these assumptions are, like the one first mentioned, very erroneous. The geometrical processes employed shew that nothing like trigonometry was known. No attempt is made to assign the absolute values of the magnitudes whose ratios are investigated; in fact, this could not be done without an actual measurement of the earth--an operation which seems to have been first attempted on scientific principles in the next generation. [Eratosthenes.] Aristarchus does not explain his method of determining the apparent diameters of the sun and of the earth's shadow; but the latter must have been deduced from observations of lunar eclipses, and the former may probably have been observed by means of the skaphium by a method described by Macrobius. (Somn. Scip. 1.20.) This instrument is said to have been invented by Aristarchus (Vitr. 9.9) : it consisted of an improved gnomon [Anaximander], the shadow being received not upon a horizontal plane, but upon a concave hemispherical surface having the extremity of the style at its centre, so that angles might be measured directly by arcsinstead of by their tangents. The gross error in the value attributed to the sun's apparent diameter is remarkable; it appears, however, that Aristarchus must afterwards have adopted a much more correct estimate, since Archimedes in the Ψαμμίτης (Wallis, Op. vol. iii. p. 515) refers to a treatise in which he made it only half a degree. Pappus, whose commentary on the book περὶ μεγεθῶν, &c. is extant, does not notice this emendation, whence it has been conjectured, that the other works of Aristarchus did not exist in his time, having perhaps perished with the Alexandrian library.
It has been the common opinion, at least in modern times, that Aristarchus agreed with Philolaus and other astronomers of the Pythagorean school in considering the sun to be fixed, and attributing a motion to the earth. Plutarch (de fac. in orb. lun. p. 922) says, that Cleanthes thought that Aristarthus ought to be accused of impiety for supposing (ὑποτιθέμενος), that the heavens were at rest, and that the earth moved in an oblique circle, and also about its own axis (the true reading is evidently Κλεάνθης ᾤετο δεῖν Ἀρίσταρχον, κ. τ. λ.); and Diogenes Laertius, in his list of the works of Cleanthes mentions one πρὸς Ἀρίσταρχον. (See also Sext. Empir. ad v. Math. p. 410c.; Stobaeus, 1.26.) Archimedes, in the ψαμμίτης (l.c.), refers to the same theory. (ὑποτίθεται γὰρ, κ. τ. λ.) But the treatise περὶ μεγεθῶν contains not a word upon the subject, nor does Ptolemy allude to it when he maintains the immobility of the earth. It seems therefore probable, that Aristarchus adopted it rather as a hypothesis for particular purposes than as a statement of the actual system of the universe. In fact, Plutarch, in another place (Plat. Quest. p. 1006) expressly says, that Aristarchus taught it only hypothetically. On this question, see Schaubach. (Gesch. d. Griech. Astronomie, p. 468, &c.) It appears from the passage in the ψαμμίτης alluded to above, that Aristarchus had much juster views than his predecessors concerning the extent of the universe. He maintained, namely, that the sphere of the fixed stars was so large, that it bore to the orbit of the earth the relation of a sphere to its centre. What he meant by the expression, is not clear : it may be interpreted as an anticipation of modern discoveries, but in this sense it could express only a conjecture which the observations of the age were not accurate enough either to confirm or refute--a remark which is equally applicable to the theory of the earth's motion. Whatever may be the truth on these points, it is probable that even the opinion, that the sun was nearly twenty times as distant as the moon, indicates a great step in advance of the popular doctrines.
Censorinus (de Die Natali, 100.18) attributes to Aristarchus the invention of the magnus annus of 2484 years. Editions Latin Editions
A Latin translation of the treatise περὶ μεγεθῶν was published by Geor. Valla, Venet. 1498, and another by Commandine, Pisauri, 1572. Greek Editions
The Greek text, with a Latin translation and the commentary of Pappus, was edited by Wallis, Oxon. 1688, and reprinted in vol. iii. of his works.
There is also a French translation, and an edition of the text, Paris, 1810. Further Information
Delambre, Hist. de l'Astronomie Ancienne, liv. i. chap. 5 and 9; Laplace, Syst. du Monde, p. 381; Schaubach in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopädie.) [W.F.D]
(Ἀρίσταρχος) of Tegea, a tragic poet at Athens, was contemporary with Euripides, and flourished about 454 B. C. He lived to the age of a hundred. Out of seventy tragedies which he exhibited, only two obtained the prize. (Suidas, s.v. Euseb. Chiron. Arnen.) Nothing remains of his works, except a few lines (Stobaeus, Tit. 63.9, tit. 120.2; Athen. 13.612f.), and the titles of three of his plays, namely, the Ἀσκληπιός, which he is said to have written and named after the god in gratitude for his recovery from illness (Suidas), the Ἀχιλλεύς, which Ennius translated into Latin (Festus, s. v. prolato aere,) and the Τάνταλος. (Stobaeus, 2.1.1.) [P.S]
(Ἀρίσταρχος). (1) A Samian mathematician and astronomer at Alexandria, who flourished between B.C. 280 and 264.
(2) Of Samothrace, the celebrated grammarian, flourished B.C. 156. He was a pupil of Aristophanes, and founded at Alexandria a grammatical and critical school. At an advanced age he went to Cyprus, where he died at the age of seventy-two, of voluntary starvation, because he was suffering from incurable dropsy. Aristarchus was the greatest critic of antiquity. His labours were chiefly devoted to the Homeric poems, of which he published an edition which has been the basis of the text from his time to the present day. He divided the Iliad and Odyssey into twenty-four books each. His text of the Homeric poems is substantially the groundwork of our present recensions. It had marginal notes indicating the verses which Aristarchus regarded as spurious or doubtful, and pointing out anything worthy of remark. The meaning of the notes, and the reasons for appending them, were explained in separate commentaries and excursuses, founded on a marvellously minute acquaintance with the language and contents of the Homeric poems and the whole of Greek literature. He was the head of the school of Aristarcheans, who continued working on classical texts in his spirit till after the beginning of the Empire. Of his numerous grammatical and exegetical works only fragments remain. An idea of his Homeric studies, and of their character, can best be gathered from the Venetian scholia to the Iliad, which are largely founded on extracts from the Aristarcheans Didymus and Aristonicus. See Homerus.
- Paus. 6.16.7
- Paus. 5.20.4, 5