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text:asius_poems

Elegy and Iambus. with an English Translation by. J. M. Edmonds. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1931. 1.

Asius: Poems

“The cities in these islands are Ionian, Samos off Mycala and Chios opposite Mimas. According to the Epic poems of Asius son of Amphiptolemus of Samos, Phoenix had by Perimeda daughter of Oeneus two daughters, Astypalaea and Europa, etc.”

Pausanias Description of Greece:


“Being very desirous to know what children Polycaon had by Messena, I have perused the Eoiai as they are called and the Epic of Naupactus, and also the genealogic poems of Cinaethon and Asius.”

Pausanias Description of Greece


“With regard to the luxury of the Samians, Duris in his History adduces the poems of Asius to prove that they wore armlets, etc.”

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner


‘What you mean’ (added Ulpian)‘by like Simonides I do not know.’ ‘Of course not’ said Myrtilus; ‘you have no interest in history, Master Pot-belly. You are a fat-licker and, to use a word of the old Samian poet Asius, a flatterer of fat. ’ When Myrtilus had taken another drink, Ulpian asked him again where the word fat-licker occurred, and what the lines of Asius were about the flatterer of fat. ‘The lines of Asius’ rejoined Myrtilus ‘are these:

Lame, branded,1 aged, like a beggarman came the flatterer of fat to Meles' wedding, came unasked and in need of broth, and stood in their midst like a ghost2 risen from the mire.’3

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner


1 as a runaway slave

2 Wil : lit. hero

3 Wil. the mire of Hades, cf. Ar. Ran. 145


A few fragments of Asius' genealogic poetry in epic verse are preserved by Pausanias, Strabo, Athenaeus, and others; see Kinkel Epic. Graec.

text/asius_poems.txt · Last modified: 2014/01/15 11:56 by 127.0.0.1