Apion in Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities

A Greek grammarian of the first century A.D., a pupil of Didymus, and president of the philological school at Alexandria. He also worked for a time at Rome under Tiberius and Claudius. A vain, boastful man, he travelled about the Greek cities, giving popular lectures on Homer. Of his many writings we have only fragments left. The glosses on Homer that bear his name are of later origin; on the other hand, the Homeric lexicon of the sophist Apollonius is based on his genuine Homeric glosses. His bitter complaint, Against the Jews, addressed to Caligula at the instance of the Alexandrians, is best known from Iosephus's noble reply to it. See Aul. Gell. v. 14; Epist. 38.