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Lycophron

Lycophron

c. 320 BCE–c. 250 BCE · Alexandria

Lycophron (3rd century BCE), born at Chalcis in Euboea, was a Greek tragic poet and scholar who worked at Alexandria, where he was counted among the 'Pleiad' of tragedians and was entrusted with arranging the comedies in the Library, producing a treatise on comedy. He is best known for the 'Alexandra,' an extraordinarily obscure and learned poem in which the prophetess Cassandra foretells the fall of Troy and later history, famous for its difficulty. Some scholars question whether the surviving poem is entirely his work, since parts seem to allude to the rise of Roman power.

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AlexandriaEgypt

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About Alexandria

Alexandria is the main Mediterranean port of northern Egypt and the country's second city. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, it became the capital of the Ptolemies, whose Museum and Great Library made it the leading centre of Hellenistic learning. It also held one of the largest Jewish communities of antiquity, where the Greek Bible translation known as the Septuagint was produced and Philo wrote. Church tradition traces its patriarchate to Mark the Evangelist, and its catechetical school was led by Clement and Origen. Arab forces under Amr ibn al-As took the city in 641, and it remained a commercial and scholarly hub of the Islamic world; the Sufi master Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari was born there.

In Alexandria at the same time

Hecataeus of Abdera, Herophilus of Chalcedon, Callimachus, Erasistratus of Ceos, Apollonius Rhodius, Eratosthenes of Cyrene

Across the traditions, in Alexandria at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Lycophron’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Lycophron’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(1)