Panyassis of

Halicarnassus Halicarnassus ( ; Latin: ''Halicarnassus'' or ''Halicarnāsus''; ''Halikarnāssós''; ; Carian language, Carian: 𐊠𐊣𐊫𐊰 𐊴𐊠𐊥𐊵𐊫𐊰 ''alos k̂arnos'') was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek city in Caria, in Anatolia.

, sometimes known as Panyasis (), was a 5th-century BC

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

epic poet from

in the

Persian Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the larg ...

(modern-day

Bodrum Bodrum () is a town and district of Muğla Province, Turkey. About 200 thousand people live in the district, which covers 650 km2 and includes the town. It is a port town at the entrance to the Gulf of Gökova. Known in ancient times as Hal ...

, Turkey).

Life

Panyassis was the son of Polyarchus () from Halicarnassus, but the historian

Duris of Samos Duris of Samos (or Douris) (; BCafter 281BC) was a Greek historian and was at some period tyrant of Samos. Duris was the author of a narrative history of events in Greece and especially Macedonia from 371BC to 281BC, which has been lost. Othe ...

claimed that Panyasis was the son of Diocles () and from

Samos Samos (, also ; , ) is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese archipelago, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the Mycale Strait. It is also a separate reg ...

. In addition, the historian

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

was either his nephew or his cousin. There was also another person of the same name, possibly the grandson of the poet, who wrote a work in two books on dreams.Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)
/ref> In 454 BC, Panyassis was executed for political activities by the tyrant of Halicarnassus and grandson of Artemisia, Lygdamis ΙΙ (), after an unsuccessful uprising against him. Panyasis was ranked by the

Alexandrian School The Alexandrian school is a collective designation for certain tendencies in literature, philosophy, medicine, and the sciences that developed in the Hellenistic cultural center of Alexandria, Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Alex ...

with the great epic poets. The

Suda The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; ; ) is a large 10th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine encyclopedia of the History of the Mediterranean region, ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas () or Souidas (). It is an ...

encyclopedia mentions Panyassis.

Works

Panyassis enjoyed relatively little critical appreciation during his lifetime, but was posthumously recognised as one of the greatest poets of

archaic Greece Archaic Greece was the period in History of Greece, Greek history lasting from to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, following the Greek Dark Ages and succeeded by the Classical Greece, Classical period. In the archaic period, the ...

. His most famous works are: the ''Heracleia'' about the hero

Heracles Heracles ( ; ), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a Divinity, divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of ZeusApollodorus1.9.16/ref> and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive descent through ...

, written in epic hexameter, and the '' Ionica'' about the histories of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, reportedly written in pentameter. These works are preserved today only in fragments. It is believed that he also wrote other works which have since been lost.

References

Ancient Halicarnassians Ancient Greeks from the Achaemenid Empire Early Greek epic poets 5th-century BC Greek poets Executed ancient Greek people 5th-century BC executions Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown {{AncientGreece-poet-stub