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Andrew Brown
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Andrew Brown
Achilles (Ἀχιλλεύς), son of *Peleus and *Thetis; greatest of the Greek heroes in the Trojan War; central character of *Homer's Iliad.
His name may be of Mycenaean Greek origin, meaning ‘a grief to the army’. If so, the destructive Wrath of Achilles, which forms the subject of the Iliad, must have been central to his mythical existence from the first.
In Homer he is king of Phthia, or ‘Hellas and Phthia’, in southern Thessaly (see
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Ewen Bowie
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Achilles Tatius (2) (probably 3rd cent.
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Acusilaus, of Argos, lived ‘before the *Persian Wars’ (Joseph. Ap. 1–13) and compiled *genealogies, translating and correcting *Hesiod, with ingenious conjectures but no literary merit.
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M. B. Trapp
Adrianus (Hadrianus) of Tyre (c. CE 113–93), sophist, pupil of *Herodes Atticus; held the chairs of rhetoric at Athens and Rome. One short *declamation attributed to him survives. See
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Pavlos Avlamis
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Steven D. Smith
Aelian (Claudius Aelianus, 161/77–230/8 CE), an influential writer of miscellaneous works in Rome during the reign of the Severan emperors, helped shape the literary landscape of the so-called Second Sophistic. There are two sources for his life, one a contemporary notice by Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists, and the other a brief entry in the 10th-centurySuda lexicon. According to the former, Aelian ‘was a Roman, but he spoke and wrote Attic Greek’ (VS 624). A student of the sophist Pausanias of Caesarea and an admirer of Herodes Atticus, Aelian himself declined to declaim in public and instead committed himself to writing and composition. He died without any children, and he claimed never to have travelled outside of Italy. The Suda supplies additional information: Aelian was born in Praeneste (modern Palestrina) near Rome and he was a high priest (ἀρχιερεύς), though the Byzantine source is silent about what god Aelian served.
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M. B. Trapp
Aelianus (1st–2nd cent.
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David Whitehead
Aeneas (Aineias) Tacticus, probably the Stymphalian general of the Arcadian koinon (see
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Edward Harris
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Michael Gagarin
(4th cent.
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Alan H. Sommerstein
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J. S. Rusten
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Agathocles (2) of Cyzicus, grammarian, c. 275/65 –200/190
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Andrew Brown
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Stephen Instone and Antony Spawforth
(1) The term agōn (ἀγών) and its derivatives can denote the informal and extempore competitive struggles and rivalries that permeated Greek life in the general fight for success and survival (cf. Hes. Op. 11–26), especially philosophical, legal, and public debates; action between opposing sides in war; medical disputes. Competitive behaviour in this last area is illustrated by the Hippocratic work (see
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C. Carey
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Kenneth Dover and Christopher Pelling
Is called by the Suda a comedian of the Old Comedy (see
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Alan Douglas Edward Cameron and Christopher Pelling
Alcaeus (3) of Messen (fl. 200