Apollodōrus
（
Ἀπολλόδωρος).
1.
A Greek poet of the New Comedy, born at Carystus, between B.C. 300 and 260. He wrote
forty-seven plays, and won five victories. From him Terence borrowed the plots of his
Phormio and
Hecyra.
2.
A Greek grammarian and historian of Athens, about B.C. 140, a pupil of Aristarchus and the
Stoic Panaetius. He was a most prolific writer on grammar, mythology, geography, and history.
Some of his works were written in iambic senarii—e. g. a geography, and the
Chronica, a condensed enumeration of the most important data in history and
literature from the fall of Troy, which he places in B.C. 1183, down to his own
time—undoubtedly the most important of ancient works on the subject. Besides
fragments, we have under his name a book entitled
Bibliotheca, a great
storehouse of mythological material from the oldest theogonies down to Theseus, and, with all
its faults of arrangement and treatment, a valuable aid to our knowledge of Greek mythology.
Yet there are grounds for doubting whether it is from his hand at all, or whether it is even
an extract from his great work,
On the Gods, in twenty-four books. A good
edition is Hercher's
(Berlin, 1874).
3.
A Greek painter of Athens, about B.C. 420, the first who graduated light and shade in his
pictures, whence he received the name of Sciagrăphus
(shadowpainter). This invention entitled him to be regarded as the founder of a new style,
which aimed at producing illusion by pictorial means, and which was carried on further by his
younger contemporary Zeuxis (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N.
xxxv. 60).
4.
A Greek architect of Damascus, who lived for a time at Rome, where, among other things, he
built Trajan's Forum and Trajan's Column. He was first banished and then put to death under
Hadrian, A.D. 129, having incurred that emperor's anger by the freedom of his criticisms. We
have a work by him on engines of war, addressed to Hadrian.
