Callistratus, Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

n grammarian, flourished at the beginning of the 2nd century BC. He was one of the pupils of Aristophanes of Byzantium

Aristophanes of Byzantium

Aristophanes of Byzantium was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus,...

, who were distinctively called Aristophanei. Callistratus chiefly devoted himself to the elucidation of the Greek poets; a few fragments of his commentaries have been preserved in the various collections of scholia

Scholium

Scholia , are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments, either original or extracted from pre-existing commentaries, which are inserted on the margin of the manuscript of an ancient author, as glosses. One who writes scholia is a scholiast...

 and in Athenaeus

Athenaeus

Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...

. He was also the author of a miscellaneous work called Summikta , used by the later lexicographers, and of a treatise on courtesans

Hetaera

In ancient Greece, hetaerae were courtesans, that is to say, highly educated, sophisticated companions...

(Athenaeus iii.125b, xiii.591d).