Antipater of Sidon

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Antipater of Sidon (in Greek, Ἀντίπατρος), Antipatros or Antipatros Sidonios in the Anthologies, was an Greek poet in the second half of the 1st century BC.

Antipater was the author of short elegiacs, some of which are preserved in the Greek Anthology, e.g., "Crown of Meleager". He also composed an epitaph for Sappho in which he stated that she died of natural causes and was buried in her homeland. Cicero (Oratore, III, 50 and de Fato, 2) described him as a brilliant epigrammist but sometimes too fond of imitation.

He, along with Philo of Byzantium, Strabo, Herodotus and Diodoros of Sicily, is attributed with the list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which he described in a poem composed about 140 BC:

I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, 'Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand.'

– Antipater, Greek Anthology IX.58

Works

• Epigraph

Bibliography

• Jean-Claude Polet, Patrimoine littéraire européen, v. II, De Boeck Université, 1992. (French)

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