Herodikos the Babylonian (1)

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During the second century CE lived Herodikos the Babylonian who wrote a scurrilous work mocking Plato and Sokrates, and showed a strong preference for Homer; his writing seems to be the first of a long-lived type in which the writings of Plato and Homer were compared and judged. One of Herodikos’ famous epigrams is extant:

Away with you from Greece, ye scholars of Aristarchus;
Take flight over the broad back of the sea,
More fearful than the brown antelope,
Ye who buzz in corners and talk of monosyllables,
Whose business is sphin and sphoin and min and nin.
Let these things be yours, ye fretful men,
but may Hellas and divine Babylon ever remain for Herodikos.

Herodikos also compiled a reference work listing the people named in Greek comedies - not a characteristic composition for a Greek author; perhaps one can see in this work a legacy of the list-making habits of earlier academies in Babylonia.

Bibliography

Stephanie Dalley

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