ABSTRACT
The Arabs, who could make but little of Greek literature, studied Greek science, including mathematics, with zeal and intelligence, and translated into their own tongue a large number of treatises. The conception of a classical literature, consisting of the great writers from Homer to Menander, took shape, and on this literature study was concentrated, besides such imitation as in time led to the Atticizing movement. Under Ptolemy Philometor, 181146, lived the greatest of all Alexandrian scholars, Aristarchos of Samothrace, who produced a text of Homer to which it is perhaps not unjust to say our editions go back. While Alexandria thus flourished, neither Athens nor the rival centre to Alexandria, Pergamon, was idle. At Pergamon, several celebrated scholars worked, taking a different line from their Alexandrian colleagues, for they seem to have paid but little attention to textual criticism, much to antiquarian study. Didymos because of his gigantic capacity for work, closes the series of notable Homeric critics.
