Didymus Chalcenterus facts for kids

Didymus Chalcenterus (which means "Didymus Bronze-Guts" in Greek) was an Ancient Greek scholar and grammarian. He lived around 63 BC to 10 AD, during the time of famous figures like Cicero and Augustus.

Life of a Busy Scholar

Didymus earned his nickname "Bronze-Guts" because he worked incredibly hard. People said he wrote so many books that he couldn't even remember what he had written in earlier ones! This sometimes meant he would contradict himself.

Some ancient writers, like Athenaeus and Seneca, claimed he wrote between 3,500 and 4,000 books. Because he wrote so much and sometimes forgot his own words, he also got another nickname: biblioláthas, which means "Book-Forgetting" or "Book-forgetter."

Didymus lived and taught in two very important ancient cities: Alexandria (in Egypt) and Rome. In Rome, he became friends with Marcus Terentius Varro, another famous scholar. Didymus was important because he helped bring the great learning and knowledge from Alexandria to the Romans.

What Didymus Wrote

Didymus was a follower of the famous scholar Aristarchus. He wrote a special book about Aristarchus's version of Homer's epic poems, like the Iliad. Parts of Didymus's work on Homer can still be found in an old manuscript called the Venetus A.

He also wrote many detailed studies, called monographs, about other Greek poets and writers. He wrote about Hesiod, and famous lyric poets like Bacchylides and Pindar. He also studied Greek plays and playwrights. Many of the notes and comments (called scholia) found on the works of Pindar and Sophocles originally came from Didymus. He is also mentioned often in the notes on Aristophanes' plays. We know he wrote about other playwrights too, such as Euripides and Menander.

Didymus also studied many Greek orators, who were famous public speakers. These included Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Hypereides.

Most of Didymus's many books have not survived to today. However, we know about some of them from mentions by other ancient writers:

• A long work about words used in tragedies, which had at least 28 books.
• A work about words used in comedies.
• Other works about words with unclear meanings or incorrect expressions.
• A collection of Greek proverbs (wise sayings), which had 13 books. Many proverbs in a later collection by Zenobius came from Didymus.
• A work about the laws of Solon, a famous Athenian lawgiver.

There's also a mention that he wrote a critique (a critical review) of Cicero's book De re publica. However, some scholars wonder if this is true, because there's no clear proof that Didymus knew Latin. It's possible the source confused him with another scholar named Claudius Didymus.

A very important discovery was a piece of papyrus that contained parts of Didymus's comments on the speeches of Demosthenes. This papyrus showed that Didymus wasn't usually an original researcher. Instead, he was a very careful compiler. This means he gathered and organized a lot of information and quotes from earlier writers. He would comment on history, dates, and the style of writing.

In fiction

Didymus is a main character in Michael Livingston's 2015 historical fantasy novel The Shards of Heaven.

See also

• Homeric scholarship
• Venetus A