The ancient scholar who invented blood libel and claimed he summoned Homer's ghost

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Apion was a celebrated first-century Egyptian grammarian whose tireless work ethic earned him the nickname Mochthos, or the Toiler. Though his original writings are lost, his legacy persists through the vitriolic rebuttals of his enemies and the enduring, if distorted, tales he once recorded for history.

Born in the El Kargeh oasis, Apion rose to become the head of the prestigious Alexandrian school. He was a prolific intellectual, producing works on Egyptian wonders, Homeric linguistics, and the Roman language. His reputation as a lecturer spanned from Egypt to Rome, where he moved in high circles. Yet, his scholarly output was marked by a combative nature that eventually cemented his infamy.

In 40 CE, Apion served as a delegate for the Greek community of Alexandria, tasked with lobbying Emperor Gaius, or Caligula, against the rights of the city's Jewish population. During this political struggle, Apion leveled severe accusations, including the claim that Jews were unpatriotic and practiced human sacrifice—a charge known as blood libel. These inflammatory arguments prompted the historian Josephus to write his famous polemic, Against Apion, which serves as the primary lens through which modern scholars view his character.

Beyond his political maneuvering, Apion was a man of strange claims and popular storytelling. Pliny the Elder recorded that Apion boasted of summoning the spirit of Homer to uncover the poet's true origins. Simultaneously, he preserved folk tales like 'Androcles and the Lion' within his five-book work, Aegyptiaca. While his own texts have vanished, fragments of his Homeric lexicon and his narrative style survive in the works of later authors like Aulus Gellius and Apollonius the Sophist, leaving behind a complex figure who was both a respected grammarian and a notorious provocateur.

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