This article is about the ancient Egyptian grammarian. For the late antique Egyptian family, see Apion (family). For the 6th century Byzantine jurist, see Strategius Apion. For the genus of beetles, see Apion (beetle).
Apion (Greek: Ἀπίων; fl. 1st century CE), also called Apion Pleistoneices (Greek: Ἀπίων Πλειστονίκου, Apíōn Pleistoníkēs) and Apion Mochthos (μόχθος) was an Egyptiangrammarian and sophist in first century Egypt. Apion wrote several works, none of which have survived.
In 40 CE, he was part of a delegation sent by the Greek community of Alexandria to the Roman Emperor Gaius (Caligula) following anti-Jewish riots. The delegation intended to prevent the Emperor from granting again the rights the Jews of Alexandria had held previously and Apion argued that the Jews were unpatriotic as they did not rightly honoured the Emperor. According to Josephus, Apion further implied that the Jews took an oath to show no goodwill to gentiles and perpetrated the blood libel that Jews secretly sacrified humans in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Jewish historian Josephus criticized Apion extensively in Book 2 of his polemicAgainst Apion (Lat: Contra Apionem).
Apion wrote extensively about his native Egypt. Details of his life come almost exclusively from other ancient sources, most prominently Pliny the Elder, Aulus Gellius, as well as the 10th century Byzantineencyclopedia the Suda. According to Aulus Gellius, he wrote a version of the folk tale "Androcles and the Lion" (Noctes Atticae 5.14). Pliny related that Apion claimed to have summoned the spirit of Homer to determine the poet’s origins (Natural History 30.6.18). He wrote an alphabetic glossary of Homeric themes—a work, like others of its kind, based on the scholarship of Aristarchus of Samothrace (c. 220 – c. 143 BCE); it survives only in fragments and through the writings of Apollonius the Sophist.
According to the Suda, he was dubbed "Mochthos" (μόχθος), a word meaning "toil, labor, hardship, or trouble" in reference to his tireless work habits.
Works
Apion is known to have written several texts, all of which are lost literary works, surviving only as fragments, allusions, or epitomes in works by later authors. The well-known story "Androcles and the Lion", which is preserved in Aulus Gellius, is from his work: Aegyptiaca/Αἰγυπτιακά ("Wonders of Egypt"). The surviving fragments of his work are printed in the Etymologicum Gudianum, ed. Sturz, 1818.
Upon Homer, whose poems seem to have formed the principal part of his studies, for he is said not only to have made the best recension of the text of the poems, but to have written explanations of phrases and words in the form of a dictionary (Λέξεις Ὁμηρικαί), and investigations concerning the life and native country of the poet. The best part of his Λέξεις Ὁμηρικαί are supposed to be incorporated in the Homeric Lexicon of Apollonius. Apion's labors upon Homer are often referred to by Eustathius and other grammarians.[citation needed]
A work on Egypt (Αἰγυπτιακά) consisting of five books, which was highly valued in antiquity, for it contained descriptions of nearly all the remarkable objects in Egypt. According to Josephus in Against Apion, it also contained numerous attacks upon the Jews.
On the language of the Romans (Περὶ τῆς ‛Ρωμαίων διαλέκτου).
De metallica disciplina.
Androclus and the Lion and The Dolphin near Dicaearchia. The greatest fragments of the works of Apion are the story about Androclus and his lion, and about the dolphin near Dicaearchia.
Epigrams
In the Suda we find references to an Apion as a writer of epigrams (s. vv. Ἀγύρτης, σπιλάδες, σφάραγον, and τρίγληνα), but whether he is the same as the grammarian is uncertain.
Forbes, Peter Barr Reid; Wilson, Nigel (December 22, 2015). "Apion". Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
Further reading
Barclay, J.M.G. “The Politics of Contempt: Judaeans and Egyptians in Josephus’s Against Apion,” in J. M. G. Barclay, Negotiating Diaspora: Jewish Strategies in theRoman Empire, 109-111. London, 2004.
Damon, Cynthia, "'The Mind of an Ass and the Impudence of a Dog:' A Scholar Gone Bad," in Ineke Sluiter and Ralph M. Rosen (eds), Kakos: Badness and Anti-value in Classical Antiquity (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008) (Mnemosyne: Supplements. History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, 307)
Dawson, David. Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria. University of California Press, 1992.
Dillery, John. “Putting Him Back Together Again: Apion Historian, Apion Grammatikos.” Classical Philology, vol. 98, no. 4, 2003, pp.383–90. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/422373. Accessed 19 May 2025.
Gruen, Erich S. “Greeks and Jews: Mutual Misperceptions in Josephus’ Contra Apionem.” In The Construct of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism: Essays on Early Jewish Literature and History, 1st ed., 245–64. De Gruyter, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvbkjxph.16.
Jacobson, Howard. “Apion, the Jews, and Human Sacrifice.” The Classical Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 1, 2001, pp.318–19. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3556359. Accessed 19 May 2025.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Apion". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 226.
