RHIANUS

born c. 275 BC Greek poet and scholar from Crete and a slave. His only surviving works are 10 or 11 epigrams of some merit preserved in the Greek Anthology. He was best known as an epic poet, producing five epics, though the contents of only one, the Messeniaca, dealing with a 7th-century war between Messene and Sparta, are known. He paid little heed to those contemporary writers such as Callimachus and Theocritus who were calling for a smaller scale in epic poetry.