Antimachus of Colophon (), or of Claros, was a Greece poet and , who flourished about 400 BC.
Life
Scarcely anything is known of his life. The
Suda claims that he was a pupil of the poets
Panyassis and
Stesimbrotus.
[Suda α 2681]
Work
His poetical efforts were not generally appreciated, although he received encouragement from his younger contemporary
Plato (
Plutarch,
Lysander, 18). The emperor
Hadrian, however, would later consider him superior to
Homer.
[Cassius Dio, 69.4.6.]
His chief works were: an epic Thebaid, an account of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes and the war of the Epigoni; and an elegiac poem Lyde, so called from the poet's mistress, for whose death he endeavoured to find consolation telling stories from mythology of heroic disasters (Plutarch, Consul, ad Apoll. 9; Athenaeus xiii. 597).
Antimachus was the founder of "learned" epic poetry, and the forerunner of the Alexandrian school, whose critics allotted him the next place to Homer. He also prepared a critical recension of the Homeric poems.
He is to be distinguished from Antimachus of Teos, a much earlier poet to whom the lost Cyclic epic Epigoni was apparently ascribed (though the attribution may result from confusion).
Bibliography
-
Fragments, ed. Stoll (1845); Theodor Bergk
-
Poetae Lyrici Graeci (1882); Kinkel
-
Fragmenta epicorum Graecorum (1877). 20th century ed: V.J. Matthews
-
Antimachus of Colophon, text and commentary (Leiden : Brill, 1996)
Attribution:
External links
-
Antimachi colophonii reliquias, Henr. Guil. Stoll (ed.), Dillenburgi apud ed. Pagenstecher, 1845.
-
Poetae Lyrici Graeci. Recensuit Theodorus Bergk. Editionis quartae. Vol. 2. Lipsiae in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1882, pagg. 289-94.
-
Epicorum graecorum fragmenta, Godofredus Kinkel (ed.), vol. 1, Lipsiae in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, pagg. 273-75.
-
Scholarly Bibliography for Antimachus, at A Hellenistic Bibliography, by Martine Cuypers
