ASCLEPIADES, of Samos, epigrammatist and lyric poet, friend of Theocritus, flourished about 270 B.C. He was the earliest and most important of the convivial and erotic epigrammatists. Only a few of his compositions are actual "inscriptions"; others sing the praises of the poets whom he specially admired, but the majority of them are love-songs. It is doubtful whether he is the author of all the epigrams (some 40 in number) which bear his name in the Greek Anthology. He possibly gave his name to the Asclepiadean metre.
ASCLEPIODOTUS, Greek military writer, flourished in the 1st century B.C. Nothing is known of him except that he was a pupil of Poseidonius the Stoic (d. 51 B.C.). He is the supposed author of a treatise on Graeco-Macedonian tactics ([Greek: Taktiká Kephálaia]), which, however, is probably not his own work, but the skeleton outline of the lectures delivered by his master, who is known to have written a work on the subject.
ASCOLI, GRAZIADIO ISAIA (1820-1907), Italian philologist; of Jewish family, was born at Görz at an early age showed a marked linguistic talent. In 1854 he published his _Studii orientali e linguistici_, and in 1860 was appointed professor of philology at Milan. He made various learned contributions to the study of Indo-European and Semitic languages, and also of the gipsy language, but his special field was the Italian dialects. He founded the _Archivio glottologico italiano_ in 1873, publishing in it his _Saggi Ladini_, and making it in succeeding years the great organ of original scholarship on this subject. He was universally recognized as the greatest authority on Italian linguistics, and his article in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (9th ed., revised for this edition) became the classic exposition in English. (See ITALY: _Language_.)