(Λικύμνιος).

1. Of Chios, a distinguished dithyrambic poet, of uncertain date. Some writers, on the authority of a passage of Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math. 49, p. 447, xi. pp. 700, 701; Fabric. p. 447; Pacard. p. 556, Bekker), place him before Simonides; but this is not clearly made out, and it is perhaps more likely, from all we know of his poetry, that he belonged to the later Athenian dithyrambic school about the end of the fourth century B. C.; indeed Spengel and Schneidewin identify him with the rhetorician (No. 2). He is mentioned by Aristotle (Aristot. Rh. 3.12), in conjunction with Chaeremon, as among the poets whose works were rather fit for reading than for exhibition (ἀναλνωδτικοί). Among the poems ascribed to him was one in praise of health; a pretty sure indication of a late date, if we could be certain that the poem was his. A fragment of this poem is preserved by Sextus Empiricus (l.c.), in which three lines out of six are identical with lines in the paean of Ariphron to health; and it seems likely that it was a mere mistake in Sextus to quote the poem as by Licymnius. A poem of his on the legend of Endymion is mentioned by Athenaeus (xiii. p. 564c.), who also refers to one of his dithyrambs on the love of Argynnus for Hymenaeus (xiii. p. 603d.). Parthenius (100.22) quotes from him an account of the taking of Sardis, which has every mark of a late and fictitious embellishment of the event. Eustathius (ad Hom. Od. 3.267) mentions Λικύμνιον Βουπραδιέα ἀοιδόν. (Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. pp. 839, 840; Schmidt, Diatrib. in Dithyramb. pp. 84-86; Ulrici, Gesch. d. Hellen. Dichtk. vol. ii. p. 497; Bode, Gesch. d. Lyr. Dichtk. vol. ii. pp. 303, 304.)