Rhianos

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Rhianos from Crete (Ῥιανὸς ὁ Κρής) was a Greek poet and grammarian who was born in Bene on Crete and who worked in the second half of the 3rd century BC. Worked. According to the Suda , he was initially a slave and overseer of a palaestra , but received a good education in later life and then devoted himself to grammatical studies, probably in Alexandria . He is also said to have been a friend and contemporary of Eratosthenes (275–195 BC). He wrote new reviews of Homer , both the Iliad and the Odyssey , which differed from previously known adaptations in their sound judgment and a poetic sense of humor. His powerful atheteses (rejections of text passages) are mentioned frequently in the scholias . He also wrote epigrams , nine of which are in the Greek anthology and another in Athenaios , and which show elegance and liveliness.

But Rhianos was primarily known as the author of historical, mythological and ethnographic epics, of which the Messeniacs were most celebrated with their six books. They dealt with the Second Messenian War and the heroic deeds of one of its central figures, the Aristomenes . In the 4th book of the travelogue of Greece they are presented by Pausanias as a credible source of authority. Other similar epics were the Achaïka , Eliaka and Thessalica . The Herakleia were a long, mythological epic, which was possibly a copy of the poem of the same name by Panyassis and also consisted of the same number of books (namely 14).

Rhianos also wrote a number of epigrams on love for boys . Konstantinos Kavafis , one of the greatest poets of modern Greece, mentions Rhianos in the poem Young Men of Sidon (AD 400) from 1920.

Fragments

literature

  • Wolfgang Aly : Rianos. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IA, 1, Stuttgart 1914, Col. 781-790.
  • Carla Castelli: Riano di Creta. Ipotesi cronologiche e biografiche. In: Rendiconti. Class di lettere e scienze morali e storiche (Istituto lombardo di scienze e lettere). Volume 128, 1994, pp. 73-87.
  • Joachim Latacz : Rhianos. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 10, Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01480-0 , column 990 f.
  • Luigi Leurini: L'edizione omerica di Riano di Creta. Edizione e commento. Quasar, Rome 2007.
  • Bernhard Zimmermann , Antonios Rengakos (Hrsg.): Handbook of the Greek literature of antiquity. Volume 2: The Literature of the Classical and Hellenistic Period. CH Beck, Munich 2014, pp. 175–179.
personal data
SURNAME Rhianos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rhianos from Crete; Ῥιανὸς ὁ Κρής (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek poet and grammarian
DATE OF BIRTH 4th century BC BC or 3rd century BC Chr.
PLACE OF BIRTH Bene (Crete)
DATE OF DEATH 3rd century BC BC or 2nd century BC Chr.