ANTIMACHUS, of Colophon or Claros, Greek poet and grammarian, flourished about 400 B.C. His chief works were : a lengthy epic Thebais, an account of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes and the war of the Epigoni ; and an elegiac poem Lyde, so called from the poet's mistress. These poems, though not popular, were praised by Plato. (Cic., Brut., 191; Plutarch, Consol. ad Apoll. 9; Athenaeus xiii. 597.) He was the founder of "learned" epic poetry, and the forerunner of the Alexandrian school, whose canon allotted him the next place to Homer. He also prepared a critical recension of the Homeric poems (men tioned times in the Venetian Scholia).
See Fragments, ed. Stoll (1845) ; Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci (1882) ; Kinkel, Fragmenta epicorum Graecorum (1877).