3. Of Rhodes, a poet and grammarian of the Alexandrian school, which flourished under the early Ptolemies. He was earlier than the tragic poet Philiscus, whose time is about Ol. 120, B. C. 300, at least if we accept the assertion of Hephaestion (p. 31), that the choriambic hexameter, of which Philiscus claimed the invention, had been previously used by Simmias. Suidas (s. v.) tells us that he wrote three books of γλῶσσαι, and four books of miscellaneous poems (ποιήματα διάφορα : the latter part of the article in Suidas is obviously misplaced, and belongs to the life of Simionides of Amorgus). Of his grammatical works nothing more is known; but his poems are frequently referred to, and some of them seem to have been epic. His Γοργώ is quoted by Athenaeus (xi. p. 491); his Μῆνες and Ἀπόλλων by Stephanus Byzantinus (s. vv. Ἀμυκλαί, (Ἡμικύνες); and a fragment of thirteen lines from the latter poem is preserved by Tzetzes (Chil. 7.144), and has been edited by Brunck (Anal. vol. ii. p. 525, comp. Lect. vol. iii. p. 235).
As an epigrammatist, Simmias had a place in the Garland of Meleager, and the Greek Anthology contains six epigrams ascribed to him, besides three short poems of that fantastic species called griphi or carmina figurata, that is, pieces in which the lines are so arranged as to make the whole poem resemble the form of some object; those of Simmias are entitled, from their forms, the Wings (πτέρυγες), the Egg (ὠόν), and the Hatchet ( πέλεκνς). There are several other poems of the same species in the Anthology, such as the Pan-pipes (σύριγξ) of Theocritus, the Altar of Dosiadas, and the Egg and Hatchet of Besantinus. (Brunck, Anal. vol. i. pp. 205-210; Jacobs, Anth, Graec. vol. i. pp. 139-143, vol. xiii. pp. 951, 952; Anth. Pal. 15.21-27, vol. ii. pp. 603-609, ed. Jacobs ; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. iii. p. 808, vol. iv. pp. 494. 495.)
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