MIMNERMUS

flourished c. 630 BC early Greek elegiac poet of Colophon in Asia Minor. One of his extant fragments refers to the struggle of the Ionians against Lydia. His most important poems were a set of elegies addressed to a flute girl named Nanno. Quotations in later writers indicate that mythological narratives figured largely in these poems; but it is possible that the erotic element was more important than the mythological. He took a gloomy view of the onset of old age and prayed for death at 60, for which the more optimistic Solon sternly reproved him.