A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Ῥιανός), of Crete, was a distinguished Alexandrian poet and grammarian, in the latter part of the third century B. C. According to Suidas (s. v.), he was a native of Bene, or, as some said, of Ceraea, two obscure cities in Crete, while others made him a native of Ithome in Messenia, a statement easily explained by the supposition that Rhianus spent some time at Ithome, while collecting materials for his poem on the Messenian Wars. He was at first, as Suidas further tells us, a slave and keeper of the palaestra ; but afterwards, having been instructed, he became a grammarian. The statement of Suidas, that he was contemporary with Eratosthenes, not only indicates the time at which he lived, but suggests the probability that he lived at Alexandria in personal and literary connection with Eratosthenes. On the ground of this statement, Clinton fixes the age of Rhianus at B. C. 222.

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