ANTIMACHUS

A Greek poet and critic of Colophon, an elder contemporary of Plato, about 400 B.C. By his two principal works-the long mythical epic called Thebais and a cycle of elegies named after his loved and lost Lyde, and telling of famous lovers parted by death-he became the founder of learned poetry, precursor and prototype of the Alexandrians, who, on account of his learning, assigned him the next place to Homer amongst epic poets. In striving to impart strength and dignity to language by avoiding all that was common, his style became rigid and artificial, and naturally ran into bombast. But we possess only fragments of his works. As a scholar, he is remarkable for having set on foot a critical revision of the Homeric poems.