The
Alexandrine grammarians were
philologists and textual scholars who flourished in
Hellenistic Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, when that city was the center of
Hellenistic culture. Despite the name, the work of the Alexandrine grammarians was never confined to grammar, and in fact did not include it, since grammar in the modern sense did not exist until the first century BC. In Hellenistic and later times, "grammarian" refers primarily to scholars concerned with the restoration, proper reading, explanation and interpretation of the classical texts, including literary criticism. However unlike
Atticism, their goal was not to reform the Greek in their day.