Definition of "scholiast" [scho•li•ast]

• One of the ancient commentators who annotated the classical authors. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Later authors such as Iamblichus (VP 104, 267), Philoponus (De An.p. 88) and the scholiast on Plato (Alc. 121e) also call Alcmaeon a Pythagorean."
• "A scholiast renders ‘giving eight mouthfulls’; but the elder Philostratus uses the word in contrast to"
• "You, almost alone among men of letters, still, like a living friend, win and charm us out of the past; and if one might call up a poet, as the scholiast tried to call Homer, from the shades, who would not, out of all the rest, demand some hours of your society?"