Rhianus (Greek language: Ῥιανὸς ὁ Κρής) was a Greeks poet and grammarian, a native of Crete, friend and contemporary of Eratosthenes (275–195 BC).
Biography
The
Suda says he was at first a
slavery and overseer of a
palaestra, but obtained a good education later in life and devoted himself to grammatical studies, probably in
Alexandria.
[ Suda ρ 158] He prepared a new recension of the
Iliad and
Odyssey, characterized by sound judgment and poetical taste. His bold atheteses are frequently mentioned in the scholia. He also wrote
, eleven of which, preserved in the
Greek Anthology and
Athenaeus, show elegance and vivacity. But he was chiefly known as a writer of epics (mythological and ethnographical), the most celebrated of which was the
Messeniaca in six books, dealing with the Second Messenian War and the exploits of its central figure
Aristomenes, and used by Pausanias in his fourth book as a trustworthy authority. Other similar poems were the
Achaica,
Eliaca, and
Thessalica. The
Hercules was a long mythological epic, probably an imitation of the poem of the same name by
Panyasis, containing the same number of books (fourteen).
Legacy
Rhianos also wrote a number of homoerotic epigrams, and was also mentioned in one of Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy's poems ("Young Men of Sidon (A.D. 400)").
[Constantine P. Cavafy, Τα Ποιήματα Β' (1919-1933), Ikaros, 1991, , pp. 22 and 109.]
Notes
