APOLLONIA, the name of more than thirty cities of antiquity. The most important are the following: (1) An Illyrian city (known as Apollonia κατ᾽ Έπίδαμνον or πρὸς Έπιδάμνῳ) on the right bank of the Aous, founded by the Corinthians and Corcyraeans. It soon became a place of increasing commercial prosperity, as the most convenient link between Brundusium and northern Greece, and as one of the starting-points of the Via Egnatia. It was an important military post in the wars against Philip and during the civil wars of Pompey and Caesar, and towards the close of the Roman republic acquired fame as a seat of literature and philosophy. Here Augustus was being educated when the death of Caesar called him to Rome. It seems to have sunk with the rise of Aulon, and few remains of its ruins are to be found. The monastery of Pollina stands on a hill which probably is part of the site of the old city. (2) A Thracian city on the Black Sea (afterwards Sozopolis, and now Sizeboli), colonized by the Milesians, and famous for its colossal statue of Apollo by Calamis, which Lucullus removed to Rome.
APOLLONIUS, surnamed ὁ δύσκολος (“the Surly or Crabbed”), a celebrated grammarian of Alexandria, who lived in the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. He spent the greater part of his life in his native city, where he died; he is also said to have visited Rome and attracted the attention of Antoninus. He was the founder of scientific grammar and is styled by Priscian grammaticorum princeps. Four of his works are extant: On Syntax, ed. Bekker, 1817; and three smaller treatises, on Pronouns, Conjunctions and Adverbs, ed. Schneider, 1878.
Grammatici Graeci, i. in Teubner series; Egger, Apollonius Dyscole (1854).
APOLLONIUS, surnamed ὁ μαλακός (“the Effeminate”), a Greek rhetorician of Alabanda in Caria, who flourished about 120 B.C. After studying under Menecles, chief of the Asiatic school of oratory, he settled in Rhodes, where he taught rhetoric, among his pupils being Mark Antony.
APOLLONIUS, surnamed “the Sophist,” of Alexandria, a famous grammarian, who probably lived towards the end of the 1st century A.D. He was the author of a Homeric lexicon (Λέξεις Όμηρικαί), the only work of the kind we possess. His chief authorities were Aristarchus and Apion’s Homeric glossary.
Edition by Villoison (1773), I. Bekker (1833); Leyde, De Apollonii Sophistae Lexico Homerico (1885); E.W.B. Nicholson on a newly discovered fragment in Classical Review (Nov. 1897).