Antimachus

, one of four poets of the same name mentioned by Suidas, was a native of Ciaros, according to Ovid, and of Colophon, according to others. The anonymous author of the description of the olympiads makes him contemporary with Lysander, and even with Plato, who, when a youth, is said to have been present when Antimachus’s poem the “Thebaid” was read. The learned author of the travels of Anacharsis places him in the fifth century B. C. Whenever he lived, we must regret that scarcely any of his writings have descended to posterity, as he had such reputation as to be accounted next to Homer, and it is said that the emperor Adrian preferred him to that illustrious poet. Besides the “Thebaid,” he wrote the “Lydian.” Being violently enamoured of Chryseis, he followed her into Lydia, her native country, where she died in his arms. On his return home, he perpetuated his affliction in a poem to her memory, and called from her name, which is praised by Ovid. We find a fragment of Antimachus in the Analects of Brunck, and Schellenberg published what else remains, in 1786, under the title “Antimachi Colophonii lleliquias nunc primum conquirere et explicare instituit C. A. G. Schellenberg, Accessit Epistola *>id.Aug,Wolfii.” ²