Aristaenetus
Appearance
Aristaenetus (Greek: Ἀρισταίνητος) was an ancient Greek epistolographer who flourished in the 5th or 6th century. He was formerly identified with Aristaenetus of Nicaea (the friend of Symmachus[disambiguation needed]), who perished in an earthquake at Nicomedia, 358, but internal evidence points to a much later date. Under his name, two books of love stories, in the form of letters, are extant; the subjects are borrowed from the erotic elegies of such Alexandrian writers as Callimachus, and the language is a patchwork of phrases from Plato, Lucian, Alciphron and others.
Sources
- Boissonade (1822); Hercher, Epistolographi Graeci (1873). English translations: Boyer (1701); Thomas Brown (1715); R. B. Sheridan and Nathaniel Halhed (1771 and later).
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aristaenetus". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the