Apellicon
Apellicon, a wealthy native of
Teos, afterwards an
Athenian citizen, and a famous book collector. He not only spent large sums in the acquisition of his library, but stole original documents from the archives of Athens and other cities of
Greece. Being detected, he fled in order to escape punishment, but returned when
Athenion (or Aristion), a bitter opponent of the Romans, had made himself tyrant of the city with the aid of
Mithradates. Athenion sent him with some troops to
Delos, to plunder the treasures of the temple, but he showed little military capacity. He was surprised by the Romans under the command of
Orobius (or Orbius), and only saved his life by flight. He died a little later, probably in
84 BC.
Apellicon's chief pursuit was the collection of rare and important books. He purchased from the family of
Neleus of Skepsis in the
Troad manuscripts of the works of
Aristotle and
Theophrastus (including their libraries), which had been given to Neleus by Theophrastus himself, whose pupil Neleus had been. They had been concealed in a cellar to prevent their falling into the hands of the book-collecting princes of
Pergamum, and were in a very dilapidated condition. Apellicon filled in the
lacunae, and brought out a new, but faulty, edition. In
84 BC Sulla removed Apellicon's library to
Rome (
Strabo xiii. p. 609;
Plutarch,
Sulla, 26). Here the manuscripts were handed over to the
grammarian Tyrannion, who took copies of them, on the basis of which the peripatetic philosopher
Andronicus of Rhodes prepared an edition of Aristotle's works. Apellicon's library contained a remarkable old copy of the
Iliad. He is said to have published a biography of Aristotle, in which the calumnies of other biographers were refuted.
