Agallis

For the genus of flowering plants in the mustard family, see Tropidocarpum.

Agallis (Gr. Ἀγαλλίς, fl. 2nd century BC) of Corcyra was a female grammarian who wrote about Homer, according to Athenaeus.[1] Some scholars believe her to have belonged to the hetaerae class.[2] She attributed the invention of ball games to Nausicaa, one of her countrywomen, and most later writers took her bias in this matter as self-evident. Her writings are no longer extant.[3]

Some have supposed from two passages in the Suda that we ought to read "Anagallis" in this passage of Athenaeus.[4] The scholiast on Homer and Eustathius[5] mention a grammarian of the name of Agallias, a pupil of Aristophanes the grammarian, also a Corcyraean and a commentator upon Homer, who may be the same as Agallis, or perhaps her father.[6]

For a time in the 19th century, the name "Agallis" was thought to be the subject of one of the poems of Sappho. Later scholarship showed this to have been an erroneous interpretation of a corrupted text.[7][8]

References

  1. ^ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae i. p. 14, d.
  2. ^ Hecker, Eugene Arthur (1914). A Short History of Women's Rights from the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. New York City: G. P. Putnam's Sons. pp. 42. http://books.google.com/?id=igIMJp5q6wMC&pg=PA42&dq=agallis. 
  3. ^ Pomeroy, Sarah B. (1990). Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. pp. 61. ISBN 0-8143-2230-1. http://books.google.com/?id=lcH6oWafBq8C&pg=PA61&dq=agallis. 
  4. ^ Suda, s.v. Ἀνάγαλλις and Ὄρχησις
  5. ^ ad Il. xviii. 491
  6. ^ Smith, William (1870). "Agallis". In Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 1. Boston. pp. 57. http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/0066.html 
  7. ^ Parsons, Peter; T.P. Wiseman (ed.) (2006). Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 53. ISBN 0-19-726323-2. http://books.google.com/?id=7_ddt_LSl_wC&pg=PA53&dq=agallis. 
  8. ^ Bülow-Jacobsen, Adam (1992). Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Papyrologists. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. pp. 121. ISBN 87-72-89264-1. http://books.google.com/?id=QOYO2qHYOU4C&pg=PA121&dq=agallis. 

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).