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On this page: Homer (continued)

HOMER

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only partially counteract the gradually increasing corruption of the text, we may probably trace the copies of the Homeric poems which were afterwards in existence in various parts of Greece. In course of time these also in their turn underwent many arbitrary alterations, chiefly at the

joyed both the means and the opportunity in the collection of ancient manuscripts of the poet in the Library of Alexandria. The beginning was made by ZfiNto&rus of Ephesus, who was succeeded by aristo­phanes of Byzantium, whose pupil aris-tarchus (g.t).), by his dition of Homer,

BCTBBTB. ,-. TDtnlCHOKK. UBAKI*. POLTHyKHI A. ATOLLO H

(4) The b»bi- hombb lupported Tbe euuui hibtoby. p

Uble kaxtk by the iliad uid op MTTB.

•ndnMK. odibibv.

(2) * APOTHEOSIS OP HOMEB. (Relief fonnd at Bovillse. Now in British Museum.)

hands of the learned who sought to im­prove the text. The first to do this were the Alexandrine scholars, who found in Homer a central point for their philo­logical studies, and practised a methodical criticism of the text, for which they en-

reached the highest point that the ancients ever attained in philological criticism. The editions of these Alexandrine Clitics were founded on the redaction by Pisistratua, and are themselves the origin of our pre­sent text of the Homeric poems.