Sositheus Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 tragic poet, of Alexandria Troas

Alexandria Troas

Alexandria Troas is an ancient Greek city situated on the Aegean Sea near the northern tip of Turkey's western coast, a little south of Tenedos . It is located in the modern Turkish province of Çanakkale...

, a member of the Alexandrian "pleiad"

Alexandrian Pleiad

The Alexandrian Pleiad is the name given to a group of seven Alexandrian poets and tragedians in the 3rd century BC working in the court of Ptolemy II Philadelphus...

.

He must have resided at some time in Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, since Diogenes Laërtius

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...

 tells us (vii.5,4) that he attacked the Stoic

STOIC

STOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...

 Cleanthes

Cleanthes

Cleanthes , of Assos, was a Greek Stoic philosopher and the successor to Zeno as the second head of the Stoic school in Athens. Originally a boxer, he came to Athens where he took up philosophy, listening to Zeno's lectures. He supported himself by working as water-carrier at night. After the...

 on the stage, and was hissed off by the audience. As the Suda

Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

also calls him a Syracusan

Syracuse, Italy

Syracuse is a historic city in Sicily, the capital of the province of Syracuse. The city is notable for its rich Greek history, culture, amphitheatres, architecture, and as the birthplace of the preeminent mathematician and engineer Archimedes. This 2,700-year-old city played a key role in...

, it is conjectured that he belonged to the literary circle at the court

Noble court

The court of a monarch, or at some periods an important nobleman, is a term for the extended household and all those who regularly attended on the ruler or central figure...

 of Hiero II.

According to an epigram

Epigram

An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....

 of Dioscorides in the Greek Anthology (Anth. Pal. vii.707) he restored the satyric drama in its original form. A considerable fragment is extant of his pastoral play Daphnis or Lityerses, in which the Sicilian shepherd, in search of his love Pimplea, is brought into connexion with the Phrygia

Phrygia

In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the southern Balkans; according to Herodotus, under the name of Bryges , changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the...

n reaper, son of Midas

Midas

For the legend of Gordias, a person who was taken by the people and made King, in obedience to the command of the oracle, see Gordias.Midas or King Midas is popularly remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold. This was called the Golden touch, or the...

, who slew all who unsuccessfully competed with him in reaping his grain

Cereal

Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...

. Heracles

Heracles

Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...

 came to the aid of Daphnis

Daphnis

In Greek mythology, Daphnis was a son of Hermes and a Sicilian nymph. A shepherd and flautist, he was the inventor of pastoral poetry. A naiad fell in love with him, but he was not faithful to her. In revenge, she either blinded him or turned him to stone...

 and slew Lityerses

Lityerses

In Greek mythology, Lityerses was a son of Midas. He challenged people to harvesting contests and beheaded those he beat. Heracles won the contest and killed him. He was also known as the reaper of men....

.

See Otto Crusius

Otto Crusius

Otto Crusius may refer to:* Ludwig Friedrich Otto Baumgarten-Crusius, , German Protestant divine* Otto Crusius , German classical scholar...

 s.v. Lityerses in Röscher's Lexikon der griechischen and römischen Mythologie. The fragment of twenty-one lines in Nauck

Johann August Nauck

Johann August Nauck was a German classical scholar and critic.Nauck was born at Auerstedt in Thuringia...

's Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta apparently contains the beginning of the drama. Two lines from the Aethlius (probably the traditional first king of Elis

Elis

Elis, or Eleia is an ancient district that corresponds with the modern Elis peripheral unit...

, father of Endymion

Endymion (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Endymion , was variously a handsome Aeolian shepherd or hunter or a king who ruled and was said to reside at Olympia in Elis, but he was also said to reside and was venerated on Mount Latmus in Caria, on the west coast of Asia Minor....

) are quoted by Stobaeus

Stobaeus

Joannes Stobaeus , from Stobi in Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was originally divided into two volumes containing two books each...

(Flor. li. 23).

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