DIONYSIUS THRAX (so called because his father was a Thracian)

This article appears in Volume V08, Page 286 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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DIONYSIUS THRAX (so called because his father was a Thracian) , the author of the first Greek grammar, flourished about 100 B.C. He was a native of Alexandria, where he attended the lectures of

Aristarchus

ARISTARCHUS

, and afterwards taught rhetoric in Rhodes and Rome. His TEXvn ypaaruc , which we possess (though probably not in its

original

ORIGINAL

form), begins with the definition of grammar and its functions. Dealing next with

accent

ACCENT

, punctuation marks, sounds and syllables, it goes on to the different parts of speech (eight in number) and their inflections. No rules of syntax are given, and nothing is said about style. The authorship of

Dionysius

DIONYSIUS
DIONYSIUS (c. 432–367 B.C.)

was doubted by many of the early middle-age commentators and grammarians, and in modern times its origin has been attributed to the oecumenical college founded by Constantine the

Great

GREAT

, which continued in existence till 730. But there seems no reason for doubt; the

great

GREAT

grammarians of imperial times (Apollonius Dyscolus and Herodian) were acquainted with the

work

WORK

in its present form, although, as was natural considering its popularity, additions and alterations may have been made later. The eixv,l was first edited by J. A. Fabricius from a Hamburg MS. and published in his Bibliotheca Graeca, vi. (ed. Harles). An Armenian

translation

TRANSLATION

, belonging to the 4th or 5th century, containing five additional chapters, was published with the Greek text and a French version, by M. Cirbied (183o).

Dionysius

DIONYSIUS
DIONYSIUS (c. 432–367 B.C.)

also contributed much to the criticism and elucidation of

Homer

HOMER, WINSLOW (1836-191o)

, and was the author of various other worksamongst them an account of Rhodes, and a collection of MsMrc [ (literary studies), to which the considerable fragment in the Stromata (v. 8) of Clement of Alexandria probably belongs.
Editions, with scholia, by I.

Bekker

in Anecdote Graeca, ii. and G. Uhlig (1884), reviewed exhaustively by P. Egenolrf in Bursian's Jahresbericht, vol. xlvi. (1888); Scholia, ed. A. Hilgard (1901); see also W. Horschelmann, De Dionysii Thracis interpretibus veteribus (1874) ; J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship, i. (1906).

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