ARISTARCHUS, of Samothrace, the most famous of the Greek grammarians and critics, flourished about 160 b.c. He spent the greater part of his life at Alexandria, where he studied in the school of Aristophanes of Byzantium. He acquired the highest reputation for critical skill, and founded a school for philology, which long flourished at Alexandria and afterwards at Rome. Ptolemy V. (Epiphanes) and Ptolemy VII. (Physcon) are said to have been among his pupils. During the reign of Physcon, who exercised great cruelty towards the learned men in his capital, Aristarchus withdrew to the isle of Cyprus, where, it is said, he suffered from dropsy, and voluntarily starved himself to death. Aristarchus commented on Pindar, Archilochus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Ion but his great fame rests on his recension of Homer. His principal object was to secure a thoroughly accurate text, and he carefully removed all supposed interpolations, marking with an obelus lines considered by him to be spurious, and with an asterisk those that seemed particularly beautiful. His edition was highly valued, and has been the basis of all subsequent recensions. The criticism of Aristarchus was not merely verbal; he attended carefully to metre; he arranged the Iliad and Odyssey in books, as we now have them; and he wrote elaborate commentaries, entering into all questions of mythology and geography. He is also said to have been the first to apply accents to the Homeric poems. Of his numerous commentaries, and his longer treatises, particularly that On Analogy, only a few fragments have come down through the later scholiasts. See Matthesius, Disputatio de Aristarcho Grammatico ; Villoisson, Proleg. ad. Hom. II.; F. A. Wolf, Proleg. in Ham.; Lehrs, De Aristarchi Studiis Homericis....

spoken of by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Colossians, iv, 10, and often mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. He was a Macedonian, and a native of Thessalonica. He accompanied St. Paul to Ephesus, and there continued with him during the two years of his abode in that place, sharing with him in all the dangers and labours of the ministry, Acts xix, 29; xx, 4; xxvii, 2. He was near losing his life in a tumult raised by the Ephesian silversmiths. He left Ephesus with the Apostle, and went with him into Greece. From thence he attended him into Asia; from Asia into Judea, and from Judea to Rome.