Laevius 'Melissus'

Laevius ‘Melissus’ (flourished c.100 BC; the cognomen, sometimes added, depends on identification with a person mentioned by Suetonius), Roman poet of whom little is known except that he wrote Erōtopaegnia (‘diversions of love’), love poems in a great variety of lyric metres. He was never mentioned in the succeeding two centuries but was discovered by the literary circles of the second century AD who were attracted by his idiosyncracies. He is important as a pioneer of Alexandrianism at Rome, as an experimenter in metres, and as a predecessor of Catullus in lyric poetry. Only fragments of his work survive.