the author of the Argonautics, and fumamed The Rhodian, from the place of his residence, is supposed to have been a native of Alexandria, where he is said to have recited some portion of his poem while he was yet a youth. Finding it ill received by his countrymen, he retired to Rhodes; where he is conjectured to have polished and completed his work, supporting himself by the profession of rhetoric, and receiving from the Rhodians the freedom of their city. He at length returned, with considerable honour, to the place of his birth; succeeding Erato, Athenæ in the care of the Alexandrian library in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, who ascended the throne of Egypt in the year before Christ 246. That prince had been educated by the famous Aristarchus, and rivalled the preceding sovereigns of his liberal family in the munificent encouragement of learning. Apollonius was a disciple of the poet Callimachus; but their connexion ended in the most violent enmity, which was probably owing to some degree of contempt expressed by Apollonius for the light compositions of his master. The learned have vainly endeavoured to discover the particulars of their quarrel.—The only work of Apollonius which has descended to modern times is his poem above mentioned, in four books, on the Argonautic expedition. Both Longinus and Quintilian have assigned to this work the mortifying character of mediocrity: "But (says Mr Hayley) there lies an appeal from the sentence of the most candid and enlightened critics to the voice of Nature; and the merit of Apollonius has little to apprehend from the decision of this ultimate judge. His poems abound in animated description, and in passages of the most tender and pathetic beauty. How finely painted is the first setting forth of the Argo! and how beautifully is the wife of Apollonius, Chiron introduced, holding up the little Achilles in her arms, and showing him to his father Peleus as he failed along the shore! But the chief excellence in our poet, is the spirit and delicacy with which he has delineated the passion of love in his Medea. That Virgil thought very highly of his merit in this particular, is sufficiently evident from the minute exactness with which he has copied many tender touches of the Grecian poet. Those who compare the third book of Apollonius with the fourth of Virgil, may, I think, perceive not only that Dido has some features of Medea, but that the two bards, however different in their reputation, resembled each other in their genius; and they both excel in delicacy and pathos."—The ancient scholia upon his Argonautics, still extant, are extremely useful, and full of learning.

APOLLONIUS of Perga, a city of Pamphylia, was a great geometrician, under the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, which reaches from the 2d year of the 133d Olympiad to the 3d year of the 139th. He studied a long time at Alexandria, under the disciples of Euclid; and composed several works, of which that only of the Conics remains.

a Pythagorean philosopher, born at Tyana in Cappadocia, about the beginning of the first century. At 16 years of age he became a strict observer of Pythagoras's rules, renouncing wine, women, and all sorts of flesh; not wearing shoes, letting his hair grow, and wearing nothing but linen. He soon after set up for a reformer of mankind, and chose his habitation in a temple of Æsculapius, where he is said to have performed many wonderful cures. Philostratus has wrote the life of Apollonius, in which there are numberless fabulous stories recounted of him. We are told that he went five years without speaking; and yet, during this time, that he flopped many seditions in Cilicia and Pamphylia: that he travelled, and set up for a legislator; and that he gave out he understood all languages, without having ever learned them: that he could tell the thoughts of men, and understand the oracles which birds gave by their singing. The Heathens were fond of opposing the pretended miracles of this man to those of our Saviour; and by a treatise which Eusebius wrote against one Hierocles, we find that the drift of the latter, in the treatise which Eusebius refutes, seems to have been to draw a parallel betwixt Jesus Christ and Apollonius, in which he gives the preference to this philosopher. M. du Pin has wrote a confutation of Philostratus's life of Apollonius.

Apollonius wrote some works, viz. four books of Judicial Astrology; a treatise upon the Sacrifices, showing what was proper to be offered to each deity; and a great number of letters; all of which are now lost.