Antimachus of Colophon

Antimachus, of Colophon (flourished c.400 BC), the first Greek ‘scholar-poet’ and as such a forerunner of the Hellenistic poets, anticipating them in their learned obscurities. He wrote an epic on Thebes, and in his long elegiac poem Lydē was the originator of narrative elegy, a genre in which he had many imitators. Only scanty fragments of his works survive. The Lyde was much admired by some Hellenistic poets, but objected to by Callimachus (see his Answer to the Telchinēs) on the grounds of excessive length and obscurity.