LYCOPHRON

A Greek grammarian and poet, a native of Chalcis in Euboea, who lived in the first half of the 3rd century B.C. at Alexandria, where Ptolemy Philadelphus. entrusted him with arranging for the library the works of the Greek comic poets. As a result of this occupation, he produced a voluminous and learned work on Greek Comedy. He himself wrote tragedies, and was counted one of the Pleiad, the seven Alexandrine tragedians. Of his works there remains a poem in 1,474 iambic verses, entitled Alexandra or Cassandra, which is rendered almost unreadable by the obscurity of its language and by its pedantic display of learning. It consists of a long monologue, in which Cassandra prophesies the fall of Troy and the fates of the heroes of the Trojan War, with allusions to the universal empire of Alexander the Great.