Antipater of Sidon
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Antipater of Sidon (Greek: Ἀντίπατρος ὁ Σιδώνιος, Antipatros ho Sidonios) was an ancient Greek poet of the second half of the 2nd century BC. Cicero mentions him living at Rome in the time of Crassus and Catullus,[1] and calls him a brilliant epigrammist, sometimes too fond of imitation.[2] His poems preserved in the Greek Anthology include evocations of art and literature and epitaphs, but there appears to be confusion in the Anthology between Antipater of Sidon and Antipater of Thessalonica, who lived in the following century.
Antipater composed an epitaph for Sappho, in which he stated that she died of natural causes and was buried in her homeland.[clarification needed]
Along with Philo of Byzantium, Strabo, Herodotus and Diodoros of Sicily, he is associated with the list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which he described in a poem written about 140 BC:
I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, 'Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand.'[3]
References[]
Sources[]
- Jean-Claude Polet, Patrimoine littéraire européen, v. II, De Boeck Université, 1992. (in French)
- Rolf Toman, Barbara Borngasser, and Achim Bednorz, "History of Architecture: From Classic to Contemporary". New York: Parragon, [n.d.]
External links[]
- Antipater of Sidon: translation of all surviving epigrams at attalus.org; adapted from W.R.Paton (1916–18)
- Ancient Greek poets
- Ancient Greek elegiac poets
- 2nd-century BC poets
- Hellenistic-era people
- Epigrammatists of the Greek Anthology
- People from Sidon
- Ancient Greek writer stubs
- Greek poet stubs