Online Encyclopedia

Make a correction

Your email address will not appear on the site. Note, comments may take some time to be approved.

Back to article: AELIUS HERODIANUS

Your email: Article name: Article content:

HERODIANUS, AELIUS, called b rexvcxos, Alexandrian grammarian, flourished in the 2nd century A.D. He early took up his residence at Rome, where he enjoyed the patronage of Marcus Aurelius (161-18o), to whom he dedicated his great treatise on prosody. This work in twenty-one books (KaDoXLKij irpovw, Sia) included also an account of the etymological part of grammar. The work itself is lost, but several epitomes of it have been preserved. His 'E1rcµepco•pot dealt with difficult words and peculiar forms in Homer. Herodianus also wrote numerous grammatical treatises, of which only one has come down to us in a complete form (Hepi µovijpovs M sws, on peculiar style), articles on exceptional or anomalous words. Numerous quotations and fragments still exist, chiefly in the Homeric scholiasts and Stephanus of Byzantium. Herodianus enjoyed a great reputation as a grammarian, and Priscian styles him " maximus auctor artis grammaticae."
The best edition is by A. Lentz, Herodiani. Technici religuiae (1867–1870) ; a supplementary volume is included in Uhling's Corpus grammaticorum Graecorum; for further bibliographical information see W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Littratur (1898).