Dionysius Thrax

Dionysius Thrax (Διονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ) (170 BC – 90 BC) was a Hellenistic grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. His place of origin was not Thrace as the epithet Thrax denotes, but probably Alexandria. He lived and worked in this city but later taught at Rhodes (around 144BC).

The first extant grammar of Greek, "Art of Grammar" (Tékhnē grammatiké, Greek: τέχνη γραμματική) is attributed to him but many scholars today doubt that the work really belongs solely to him due to the difference between the technical approach of most of the work and the more literary approach (similar to the 2nd century's Alexandrian tradition) of the first few sections. It concerns itself primarily with a morphological description of Greek, lacking any treatment of syntax. The work was translated into Armenian and Syriac in the early Christian era.

Thrax defines grammar at the beginning of the Tékhnē as "the practical knowledge of the general usages of poets and prose writers." Thus Thrax, like contemporary Alexandrian scholars who edited Attic Greek and Homeric texts, was concerned with facilitating the teaching of classic Greek literature to an audience who spoke Koine Greek.^[1]

References

• Dionysius Thrax, Art of Grammar
• The Tekhne Grammatike of Dionysius Thrax Translated into English by J. Alan Kemp (Historiographia Linguistica 13:2/3, 1986, pp. 343–363).
• Robins, R. H. A Short History of Linguistics (Indiana UP, 1967). (ISBN 0-253-35210-X)
• Robins, R. H. The Technē Grammatikē of Dionysius Thrax in historical perspective. In P. Swiggers, W. van Hoecke (Eds.), Mots et parties du discours. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1987.
• V. Di Benedetto, "At the Origins of Greek Grammar," Glotta 68 (1990): 19-39.
• Vivien Law, Ineke Sluiter (eds.), Dionysius Thrax and the Techne grammatike Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 1995.
• J. Lallot, La grammaire de Denys le Thrace, Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1998 (2e édition 2003).

1. ^ There are extensive scholia to the Techne, which have been edited by A. Hilgard in 1901: Scholia in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam, recensuit et apparatum criticum indicesque adiecit Alfredus Hilgard, Lipsiae: in aedibus B.G. Teubneri 1901. The collections of scholia are the following: Prolegomena Vossiana (p.1); Commentarius Melampodis seu Diomedis (p. 10); Commentarius Heliodori (p. 67); Scholiorum collectio Vaticana (p. 106); Scholiorum collectio Marciana (p. 292); Scholiorum collectio Londinensis (p. 442); Commentariolus Byzantinus (pp. 565-586).

Persondata
Name	Dionysius Thrax
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death