Theaetetus of Cyrene (; grc-gre, Θεαίτητος ὁ Κυρηναῖος) was a Greek poet who flourished in the 3rd century BC. Theaetetus is mentioned in an

epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two mille ...

Callimachus Callimachus (; ) was an ancient Greek poet, scholar and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works in a wide variety ...

, a fellow native of Cyrene. In Epigram 7 (in the edition of Pfeiffer), Callimachus writes: ἦλθε Θεαίτητος καθαρὴν ὁδόν. εἰ δ᾽ ἐπὶ κισσὸν τὸν τεὸν οὐχ αὕτη, Βάκχε, κέλευθος ἄλει, ἄλλων μὲν κήρυκες ἐπὶ βραχὺν οὔνομα καιρὸν φθέγξονται, κείνου δ᾽ Ἑλλὰς ἀεὶ σοφίην. ''Theaetetus travelled a splendid path. If that path, Bacchus, leads not to thine ivy wreath - other men's names the heralds will voice a little while, but his skill Hellas will voice for ever.'' The "ivy wreath" Callimachus mentions is the prize for dramatic competitions, from which it is possible to deduce that Theaetetus composed dramatic works. There is no reason to suspect, however, that he is not also the Theaetetus to whom six epigrams in the

Palatine Anthology The ''Palatine Anthology'' (or ''Anthologia Palatina''), sometimes abbreviated ''AP'', is the collection of Greek poems and epigrams discovered in 1606 in the Palatine Library in Heidelberg. It is based on the lost collection of Constantinus Ceph ...

are ascribed.A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page: ''The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams''. Cambridge: University Press, 1965.

References

{{authority control Ancient Greek poets 3rd-century BC poets 3rd-century BC Greek people Cyrenean Greeks