Didymus Chalcenterus

Didymos Chalkenteros (Greek Δίδυμος χαλκέντερος; * 65 BC; † 10 AD ) was a Greek grammarian and lexicographer at the time of Cicero and Augustus. He taught in Alexandria and is considered by Aristotle as one of the most prolific ancient writers.

Life and work

Didymus was the son of a father of the same name. He clung to the school of Aristarchus and is a total of 3500-4000 have written books (lost today ), although of course the associated number of its ( often several books comprehensive fonts) was significantly lower. That's why he got the nickname Bibliolathas (ie " Büchervergesser " ) because he had off because of his scribbling and made ​​in his earlier works remarks forgotten and this therefore contradicted in later writings, as well as Chalkenteros (ie " man with iron guts ") to express his tireless work. His students included, among others Apion Heraclides Ponticus and the Younger.

Extensive comments Didymos wrote to many well-known classical Greek poets, as, inter alia, to Homer, Hesiod, Bacchylides, Pindar, the three tragedians Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles, and also to Ion, Aristophanes, and Menander Phrynichus. Aristarchus text-critical notes to Homer's works, he was in a separate font again, the entrance into the four Men's commentary on the Iliad took place and in the resulting A- scholia is still recognizable. He also issued comments on the Attic orators Demosthenes, Hypereides your Archos among others. Circumferential fragments of his commentary on Demosthenes (9-11 and 13 ) were prepared by the discovery of the papyrus Berol. 9780 accessible. From them it is evident that Didymos explained mainly by reference to the historical events Atthidographen and Greek universal historian of the 4th century BC.

With voice peculiarities of tragedians and comic poets themselves Didymos employed in two probably quite extensive lexicons ( Λέξις τραγική in at least 28 books and Λέξις κομική ). He also wrote books on the problems of language and its changes. He was also the author of literary-historical and antiquarian writings and treated extremely rationalistic mythographic substances. The shape of his book Συμποσιακά, in which he embodied learned table discussions to be used later, Plutarch and Athenaeus in his own works. A collection of proverbs in 13 books Didymos put on also. They drew from older collections such and simultaneously entered into in those of Zenobius, in which it is available in traces.

Didymus was primarily a compiler, which sought to collect and organize the key findings of the special works of the Hellenistic philologists and so to save it from total loss. His fame and its aftermath were subsequently very large, his oeuvre has been exploited by writers of all kinds, but it was in its original form in the later Roman Empire lost because it was replaced by even shorter compilations. Besides the mentioned papyrus find only small few remainders obtained from Athenaeus and ancient scholia and lexica.

Editions of the fragments

• Didymus: Didymus on Demosthenes. Introduction, translation and commentary by Phillip Harding, Oxford [ua ]: Clarendon Press, 2006 (English translation of the fragments of his Demosthenes commentary )
• Light prints Didymospapyros: four panels. Edited by the General Administration of the Royal Museums / Didymus / Royal Museums / Berlin: Weidmann, 1904