Alexander Aetolus

Not to be confused with Alexander (Aetolian general).

Alexander Aetolus (Ancient Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Αἰτωλός, Alexandros ho Aitōlos) or Alexander the Aetolian was a Hellenistic Greek poet and grammarian, who worked at the Library of Alexandria and composed poetry in a variety of genres, now almost entirely lost. He is the only known Aetolian poet of antiquity.^[1]

Life and works

Alexander was a native of Pleuron in Aetolia. A contemporary of Callimachus and Theocritus, he was born c. 315 BC, and according to the Suda the names of his parent were Satyros and Stratokleia.^[2] By the 280s he was one of a group of literary scholars working at the Library of Alexandria, where Ptolemy II Philadelphus commissioned him to organize and correct the texts of the tragedies and satyr plays in the collection of the Library.^[3] Later, along with Antagoras and Aratus, he spent time at the court of the Macedonian king Antigonus II Gonatas.^[4]

In addition to his work as a scholar, Alexander was a versatile poet who produced verse in a variety of meters and genres, although only about 70 lines of his work survive, mostly in short fragments quoted by later sources.^[5] He was admired for his tragedies, which earned him a place among the seven Alexandrian tragedians who constituted the so-called Tragic Pleiad.^[6] One of his tragedies (or perhaps a satyr play),^[7] the Astragalistai ("Knucklebone-players"), described the killing of a fellow student by the young Patroklos.^[8] Alexander also wrote epics or epyllia, of which a few names and short fragments survive: the Halieus ("Fisherman"), about the sea-god Glaukos,^[9] and the Krika or Kirka (perhaps "Circe"?)^[10] The longest surviving example of his work is a 34-line excerpt from the Apollo, a poem in elegiac couplets, which tells the story of Antheus and Cleoboea.^[11] A few other elegiac fragments are quoted by other authors,^[12] and two epigrams in the Greek Anthology are usually considered his work.^[13] Ancient sources also describe him as a writer of kinaidoi (obscene verses, known euphemistically as "Ionic poems") in the manner of Sotades.^[14] A short fragment in anapestic tetrameters compares the gruff and sullen personality of Euripides with the honeyed quality of his poetry.^[15]

Editions

• A. Meineke, Analecta alexandrina (Berlin 1843), pp. 215–251.
• J. U. Powell, Collectanea alexandrina: Reliquiae minores poetarum graecorum aetatis ptolemaicae, 323–146 A.C. (Oxford 1925), pp. 121–129.
• E. Magnelli, Alexandri Aetoli testimonia et fragmenta (Florence 1999).
• J. L. Lightfoot, Hellenistic Collection (Loeb Classical Library: Cambridge, Mass. 2009), pp. 99–145 (with English translation).

References

1. Knaack 1894; Dover 1996.
2. Knaack 1894; Dover 1996; Suda, α 1127 = Lightfoot 2009, pp. 106–107, test. 1.
3. Dover 1996; Lightfoot 2009, pp. 110–115, test. 7.
4. Schmitz 1870; Knaack 1894; Dover 1996; Lightfoot 2009, pp. 106–111, test. 2–6.
5. Olson 2000.
6. Schmitz 1870; Knaack 1894; Dover 1996; Suda, α 1127 = Lightfoot 2009, pp. 106–107, test. 1.
7. Spanoudakis 2005.
8. Dover 1996; Scholiast to Iliad 2386 = Lightfoot 2009, pp. 134–135, fr. 17.
9. Knaack 1894; Athenaeus 7.296e = Lightfoot 2009, pp. 120–123, fr. 3.
10. Knaack 1894; Olson 2000; Athenaeus 7.283a = Lightfoot 2009, pp. 122–123, fr. 4. The interpretation of the title is uncertain, and Athenaeus indicates that there was doubt about the authenticity of the poem.
11. Dover 1996; preserved in Parthenius 14 = Lightfoot 2009, pp. 594–599.
12. Athenaeus 15.699c; Macrobius, Saturnalia 5.22.4–5; Strabo 12.4.8 (C566).
13. AP 7.709, A. Plan 4.172 = Lightfoot 2009, pp. 118–119, fr. 1 and 2; see Gow and Page 1965 for discussion of other epigrams sometimes attributed to him.
14. Knaack 1894; Lightfoot 2009, pp. 102; Strabo 14.1.41 (C648) and Athenaeus 14.620e, 136–137 = Lightfoot 2009, pp. 136–137, fr. 18a, b.
15. Dover 1996; Aulus Gellius 15.20 = Lightfoot 2009, pp. 138–139, fr. 19. The attribution of these verses is uncertain; see Lloyd-Jones 1994.

Sources

• Dover, K. 1996. "Alexander of Pleuron", Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., Oxford, p. 60.
• Gow, A. S. F., and D. L. Page. 1965. The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams, Cambridge, vol. 2, pp. 27–29.
• Knaack, G. 1894. "Alexandros 84", Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft I.2, 1894, cols. 1447–1448.
• Lightfoot, J. L., ed. 2009. Hellenistic Collection, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 99–145.
• Lloyd-Jones, H. 1994. "Alexander Aetolus, Aristophanes, and the Life of Euripides", Storia poesia e pensiero nel mondo antico: Studi in onore di M. Gigante, Naples, pp. 371–379.
• Olson, S. 2000. review of Enrico Magnelli, Alexandri Aetoli testimonia et fragmenta, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000.11.14.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schmitz, Leonard (1870). "Alexander Aetolus". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 111.
• Spanoudakis, K. 2005. "Alexander Aetolus' Astragalistai", Eikasmos 16, pp. 149–154.