Apion

Apion, a Greek grammarian, was born in the Libyan oasis, but educated in Alexandria, which he affected to consider his birthplace, from a wish to be thought a pure Greek. Settling at Rome about 30 A.D., he became famous as a teacher of rhetoric. He seems to have been as remarkable for his loquacious vanity as for his knowledge and real oratorical power. From his ostentatious disputations Tiberius used to call him Cymbalum Mundi ('the cymbal of the universe'). With the exception of one or two fragments, the whole of Apion's numerous writings are lost. These included a work on the text of Homer; a work on Egypt, which contained the far-famed story of 'Androclus and the Lion,' preserved by Aulus Gellius; a work against the Jews, to which Josephus replied in his work Against Apion; and one in praise of Alexander the Great.