were not.
Their editions of Homer were not only _ekdoseis_, a Greek word literally
rendered in Latin by _editio_, _i.e._ issues of books, but _diorthoseis_,
that is to say, critical editions. There were different schools, opposed
to each other in their views of the language of Homer. Each reading that
was adopted by Zenodotus or Aristarchus had to be defended, and this could
only be done by establishing general rules on the grammar of the Homeric
poems. Did Homer use the article? Did he use it before proper names? These
and similar questions had to be settled, and as one or the other view was
adopted by the editors, the text of these ancient poems was changed by
more or less violent emendations. New technical terms were required for
distinguishing, for instance, the article, if once recognized, from the
demonstrative pronoun. _Article_ is a literal translation of the Greek
word _arthron_. _Arthron_ (Lat. artus) means the socket of a joint. The
word was first used by Aristotle, and with him it could only mean words
which formed, as it were, the sockets in which the members of a sentence
moved. In such a sentence as: "Whoever did it, he shall suffer for it,"
Greek grammarians would have called the demonstrative pronoun _he_ the
first socket, and the relative pronoun _who_, the second socket;(68) and
before Zenodotus, the first librarian of Alexandria, 250 B. C., all
pronouns were simply classed as sockets or articles of speech. He was the
first to introduce a distinction between personal pronouns or
_antonymiai_, and the mere articles or articulations of speech, which
henceforth retained the name of _arthra_. This distinction was very
necessary, and it was, no doubt, suggested to him by his emendations of
the text of Homer, Zenodotus being the first who restored the article
before proper names in the Iliad and Odyssey. Who, in speaking now of the
definite or indefinite article, thinks of the origin and original meaning
of the word, and of the time which it took before it could become what it
is now, a technical term familiar to every school-boy?

Again, to take another illustration of the influence which the critical
study of Homer at Alexandria exercised on the development of grammatical
terminology,--we see that the first idea of numbers, of a singular and a
plural, was fixed and defined by the philosopher. But Aristotle had no
such technical terms as singular and plural; and he does not even allude
to the dual. He only