Zenodotus
Zenodotos ( Ζηνόδοτος ), short Zenodot, (c. 333 BC or 323 BC; † around 260 BC in Alexandria ) was a Greek scholar from Ephesus. He was a student of Philetas and teachers of the later King Ptolemy II in the year 284 BC he was appointed by Ptolemy I, for the first director of the great library of Alexandria, he built here the basis of the largest collection of writings of antiquity.
Life
The traditions about the life of Zenodotos are sparse and are mainly based on the entry in the Suda appeared around 970. Concrete survival data are not available. The biographer Hesychius of Miletus is as the beginning of life to the year 323 BC, however, is the rather interpreted as indicating the acme. It is probable that he was born around 333 BC in Ephesus and died around 260 BC in Alexandria. The earliest documented event of his life is the education of the children of Ptolemy I, in particular the Ptolemy II
Performance
Zenodotos is considered the founder of textual criticism in epic and lyric poetry. Anyway, he published the first critical edition of the texts Homer ( Iliad and Odyssey), due to different manuscripts, probably with conjectures. He has justified his decisions either in a comment or in a paper, but it seems to have been an oral tradition about it. However, he created a dictionary to Homer. It is important that he not suppressed verses whose authenticity he doubted, but in his view, only the edge of the column was expressed by a " Obelos " - the foundation of the scientific method, later researchers open the possibility of review. Whether the division of the two epics in every 24 songs back to him, is not certain. His work was continued especially by Aristophanes of Byzantium.
Zenodotos also worked on other poets as Homer, especially on Hesiod, Pindar and Anacreon.