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

====== Antimachus: Poems ======

“When Antimachus of Colophon and a certain Niceratus of Heraclea were competing at the Lysandreia in poems in his honour, he gave the prize to Niceratus, and Antimachus in anger destroyed his poem. But Plato, who was then a young man and admired his poetry, tried to sweeten the bitterness of his defeat by saying that it is the ignorant who suffer by their ignorance, as the blind by their blindness.” 

Plutarch Life of Lysander

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“Shortly after the Peace （of 404 B.C.） died Darius the King of Asia. . It is about this time that Apollodorus of Athens puts the floruit of the poet Antimachus.” 

Diodorus of Sicily Historical Library 

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“The following were the means to consolation taken by the poet Antimachus. Upon the death of his wife Lyda, to whom he was deeply attached, he wrote to assuage his grief the Elegy called by her name, and enumerating the misfortunes of the heroes, lessened his own sorrow by recounting the ills of other men.1” 

Plutarch Consolation to Apollonius 

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“There are three kinds of answers to a question, the first that of bare necessity, the second that of kindness, the third that of redundance. . The redundant or garrulous answerer, if he happen to have read Antimachus of Colophon, will say, etc.2” 

Plutarch Garrulity 

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“It would be impossible for Demosthenes to make the remark recorded of the poet Antimachus, who, when the company assembled to hear him read that great volume of his that you know so well3 was finally reduced to Plato, exclaimed ‘I shall read on all the same; I count Plato as worth all the rest put together.’ And rightly so; for a recondite poem should move the approval of few, whereas a popular disquisition asks the assent of men in general.” 

Cicero Brutus 

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“Neither was Lyde so dear to the Clarian poet nor Bittis to her Coan,4 as you, dear wife of my bosom, who are worthy maybe of a less miserable husband but not of a better.” 

Ovid Sorrows 

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“Antimachus: —Of Colophon, son of Hyparchus; grammarian and poet . . . pupil of Stesimbrotus; he flourished before the time of Plato.” 

Suidas Lexicon 

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“In Antimachus, on the contrary, we have to praise force, weight, and a style very far from commonplace. But though nearly all scholars agree that he should be placed second （to Hesiod）, he is deficient in feeling, sweetness, arrangement of matter, and in art generally, thus making it clear how different a second may be from a good second.” 

Quintilian Principles of Oratory [on Hesiod and Antimachus] 

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“There have been many exponents of the austere style. . . . Outstanding in the epic are Antimachus of Colophon and the natural philosopher Empedocles, in lyric Pindar, in tragedy Aeschylus, in history Thucydides, in political oratory Antiphon.” 

Dionysius of Halicarnassus Literary Composition 

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“Antimachus' study was vigour, a challenging ruggedness, and unusualness.” 

Dionysius of Halicarnassus Criticism of the Early Writers 

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“The Laconic is not, what you take it to be, the use of few syllables, but the use of few syllables about a great deal. In this way I call Homer extremely brief and Antimachus long.” 

Gregory of Nazianzus Epistles 

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“According to Heracleides of Pontus, Plato preferred the works of Antimachus to those of Choerilus which stood then in so high repute, and persuaded Heracleides himself to go to Colophon and collect Antimachus' poems.” 

Proclus on Plato 

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“For if we find technical perfection in a poet, he is sure to abound in calculated effect and bombast, employing metaphors nearly everywhere, like Antimachus.” 

Proclus on Plato

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That obscurity is plainly objected to by Callimachus is seen in his Epigrams , where he ridicules the Lyde of Antimachus thus: “Lyde and writing obscure instead of clear.


Scholiast on Dionysius Periegetes

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Asclepiades:— “Lyde am I by name and race;5 but Antimachus has made me nobler than all the daughters of Codrus.6 For who has not sung of me? and who has not read Lyde, the common work of the Muses and Antimachus?


Palatine Anthology

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“He is an emulator of Antimachus, and therefore uses many of his phrases; which is why he sometimes uses the Doric.” 

Scholiast on Nicander 

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“For just as the poems of Antimachus and the paintings of Dionysius, both men of Colophon, possessing as they do power and vigour, give the impression of being forced and laboured, whereas the pictures of Nicomachus and the lines of Homer combine power and grace with the appearance of having been produced with deftness and ease, so, etc.” 

Plutarch Life of Timoleon 

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“The History of Agatharchides or, as some writers call him, Agatharchus, was read. He is said to have written an Epitome of the Lyde of Antimachus.” 

Photius Library

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“Cassius Longinus: —Philosopher; . . . flourished in the reign of the emperor Aurelian （A.D. 270-5） . . wrote . . a Glossary to Antimachus .” 

Suidas

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See also Dio Cass. 69. 4, A.P. 12. 168 （quoted p. 86）, Spart. Hadr. 5, Plut. Vit. Hom. 2. 2, Suid. Πανύασις , Procl. ad Plat. Tim. i. 28, Porphyr. Vit. Plot. 7. A large number of small fragments of A'.s Thebaid and other Epics are collected by Kinkel Epic. Graec. See also the edition of Wyss （1936）.

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===== Elegiacs =====

Dotium: — Δωτιάς ‘Dotian’ is found, like Ι᾿λιάς ‘Iliad’ from Ι᾿λιεύς .. Antimachus in the Second Book of his Lyde:

//banished beyond the Dotian land//


Stephanus of Byzantium

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ὀργεῶνες : .. Seleucus in his treatise On Solon's Axones 7 declares that this was what they called all who meet together to worship heroes or Gods; but now by a transference they call priests by this name; compare Antimachus' Lyde Book iii:

//where She8 appointed the Cabarnians, those renowned priests.9//


Photius Lexicon

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“That Oedipus gave the horses to Polybus we are also told by Antimachus in the Lyde :

//And he cried ‘These horses that I took from my enemy will I give to thee, Polybus, to be my foster-gift.//’” 

Scholiast on Euripides [‘the son slew the father, and taking the chariot and its team gave them to his foster-father Polybus’] 

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Of the Sun's passage to his setting in a cup, we thus learn from Stesichorus: . . . and Antimachus says:

//Then in the golden cup was the Sun convoyed by the far-famed Erytheia.//

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner 

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ἕρκτωρ : —‘effective,’ Antimachus:

//who are the doers of the great wrongs unto thee.//

Etymologicum Magnum 

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δύπτειν ‘to vail’ is to lower, as in Callimachus . . . and earlier in Antimachus:

//even as when a gannet vails her head . . in the briny deep.10//

Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes [vailing their heads] 

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“The places whence they came to join the Argonauts are given differently, some authorities saying with Apollonius that it was from Thrace, Herodorus from Daulis, Duris from the land of the Hyperboreans; all these are given by Antimachus.” 

Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes [Zetes and Calais] 

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“According to Antimachus in the Lyde, Heracles was put ashore because his weight was too much for the Argo.”

Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes [Zetes and Calais]

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“Antimachus in the Lyde makes the bulls the work of Hephaestus.” 

Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes [the bulls of Aeetes] 

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Mosychlus is a mountain in Lemnos; compare Antimachus:

//like the fire of Hephaestus, which the God maketh amid the loftiest peaks of Mosychlus.11//


Scholiast on Nicander 

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“In these and the following lines he describes how Medea, by sprinkling a juniper with the drug, sent the serpent to sleep under a spell and so carried off the Fleece, and they both went off to the ship while the beast was in this trance; here he follows Antimachus.” 

Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes 

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“Timaeus says that the wedding of Medea took place at Corcyra, but Dionysius of Miletus in the second Book of his Argonautics brings them together at Byzantium, and Antimachus in his Lyde near the river in Colchis.”

Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes 

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“Hesiod, Pindar in the Pythian Odes , and Antimachus in the Lyde make the Argonauts come across the Ocean to Libya and carry the Argo over into our sea.” 

Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes 

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“The poet says that these islands are called Strophades because the Children of Boreas turned back （ στρέφω ） at that point; here he follows Antimachus, who thus mentions them in the Lyde . Others say that they are so called because they turned there （ ἐπιστρέφω ） when they prayed Zeus that they might catch the Harpies. According to Hesiod, Antimachus, and Apollonius, they were not slain.” 

Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes 

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“The name of the islands called Plotae or ‘floating’ was changed to Strophades: they are mentioned by Antimachus in his Lyde .” Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes [on the next line] 

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“According to Hellanicus he was the son of Agenor, but, according to Hesiod, of Phoenix son of Agenor and Cassiopeia, which is the view of Asclepiades, Antimachus, and Pherecydes.” 

Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes [Phineus Agenorides] 

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“Adonis, who was the son, according to Hesiod, of Phoenix and Alphesiboea, and according to Panyasis （?）, of Thias king of Assyria （?）, ruled over Cyprus, according to Antimachus.” 

Probus on Vergil

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“Sesami and Erythini: —Districts of Paphlagonia; Antimachus calls them Erythini because of the redness of their colour.12” 

Old Etymologicum Magnum 

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“According to the Lyde of Antimachus, the reason why Bellerophon was hated by the Gods was that he slew the Solymi who were beloved by them.” Scholiast on the Iliad “A people of Cilicia; hence called Solymi from Solymus the son of Zeus and Calchedonia, as we learn from Antimachus.” 

Scholiast on the Odyssey [‘from the Solymi’]

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With regard to the river Euleus, to which Antimachus thus refers in the poem called the Tablets:

//having come to the springs of the swirling Euleus//


Demetrius of Scepsis declares in the 16th Book of The Trojan Catalogue that it contains a peculiar sort of eel.

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner

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===== Iachine =====


ἀβολήτωρ : . . Compare Antimachus Iachine:

//Aye, and they are witnesses unto him;13//

So Philon in his Verbs . The meaning is ‘men who have covenanted or met with.’ So in Diogenian.

Etymologicum Magnum

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===== Other =====

Σοῦσα : ‘ropes’; compare Homer: （ two lines giving an otherwise unknown reading ）; Antimachus:

//And the Goddess set therein a mast and all manner of cordage for linen sails, both sheets and reefingropes, and twisted braces also and all the furniture of a ship.//

Inscription on a Potsherd, of the 3rd century B.C. 

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14Antimachus, who gives neither the number nor the names of the Graces, makes them daughters of Aegla or Daylight and the Sun.” Pausanias Description of Greece “It is neuter when it means a garment or a plough as in Alcman （fr. 1）, and also in Antimachus the copies give:

//they are ever in willing need of a garment.//

Herodian [the word φάρος ]

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It should be noted that there occur other iambic words that have not t in the nominative and yet make their genitive in ου ; they are these: .. Πύδης Πύδου ‘Pydes’ （name of a river）, as in Antimachus:

//and Pydes flowing down [over]//

this word was declined inconsistantly by Antimachus, who when it is iambic declines it without increase as above, but when it is spondaic declines it with the increase as in this:

//daughter of the far-famed River Pydes//


Choeroboscus

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Eisconiani

//the Ephesians, as in Antimachus.//

Hesychius Glossary

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1 cf. Ath. 13. 597a, 598a （Hermesianax）

2 the context, too long to quote, implies that A, was a by-word for longwindedness

3 prob. the Thebaid

4 Philetas

5 Lyde = Lydian

6 i.e. Athenians

7 i.e. the revolving tables on which his laws were inscribed

8 Demeter at Paros

9 cf. Suid., Harp. ὀργεῶνες

10 cf. E.M. 291. 19

11 a volcano; perh. from a description of the fire breathed by Aeetes’ bulls （B）

12 cf. Sch. Ap. Rh. 2. 941, where the Erythini are called ‘ridges’; perh. ‘Antimachus’ here is a corruption of ‘Apollonius' （B）

13 cf. ἀβολέω ‘to meet’ Ap. Rh. 3. 1145 and ἀβολητύς ‘a meeting’ Antimachus （?） 108 Kinkel

14 I add here certain fragments which may belong either here or with the Epic Fragments （see p. 505）: see also A.P. 9. 321, and Wyss pp. 41-51