Automedon was an

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

known from his poems in the

Greek Anthology The ''Greek Anthology'' ( la, Anthologia Graeca) is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ''Pa ...

. Twelve epigrams of his are still extant and he is mentioned by Philippus of Thessalonica in the proem of his anthology Garland of Philippus. He is placed from the 1st century B.C to the 1st century A.D. The epigrams entitled "ΑΥΤΟΜΕΔΟΝΤΟΣ" ("of Automedon") are: *in Book 5: 5.129 *in Book 10: 10.23 *in Book 11: 11.29, 11.46, 11.50, 11.319, 11.324, 11.325, 11.326, 11.346, 11.361 and *in Book 12: 12.34

11.325
''Yesterday I ate tough mutton''
''and a cabbage ten days old;''
''I won't say where I went to dinner,''
''for my host is of a cold''
''revengeful temper, and he might''
''invite me back another night.''

(Translated by

Robin Skelton Robin Skelton (12 October 1925 – 22 August 1997) was a British-born academic, writer, poet, and anthologist. Biography Born in Easington, East Riding of Yorkshire, Easington, Yorkshire, Skelton was educated at the University of Leeds and Cambr ...

) The poems attributed to Automedon may be by different poets. Those in the Anthology appear to be from the period of Nerva or Trajan; Philip's Garland, which mentions Automedon, is probably not later than the reign of Nero. One poem in the Anthology, attributed to Automedon, is ascribed in the Palatine anthology to Theocritus and may be from that period.

References

*Knox, Bernard, ed. ''The Norton Book of Classical Literature''. New York: WW Norton Co., 1993, p. 585 Ancient Greek poets {{Greece-poet-stub