Megaclides of Athens and the Homeric Exegesis between Aristotle and Aristarchus

Abstract

The paper aims to investigate the influence of the Peripatus on the Alexandrian Homeric philology and exegesis. This relationship is examined through the study of the Homeric fragments of the Peripatetic Megaclides of Athens. In a fragment specifically dedicated to the poetic portrayal of Heracles, it is possible to observe a distinction between Homer and post-Homeric poets and a devaluation of the latter’s renewal of Homeric themes. Both observations recur also in the Aristarchean exegesis, which indicates the post-Homeric poets with the derogatory expression οἱ νϵώτϵροι, perhaps already employed for this purpose by the Peripatus.