Miscellanies 1.16.79

Archilochus of Paros devised the iambic, Hipponax of Ephesus the limping iambic, Thespis of Athens tragedy, and Susarion of Icaria comedy. The sons of the grammarians hand down their dates; it would be long to set them out exactly, since Dionysus himself, from whom the Dionysiac spectacles come, is shown to be much later than Moses. They say that Antiphon of Rhamnus, son of Sophilus, first invented school discourses and rhetorical figures, and was the first to plead for a fee and to write a forensic speech for publication, as Diodorus says. Apollodorus of Cumae first introduced the name “grammarian” instead of “critic” and was called a grammarian; some say Eratosthenes of Cyrene, since he published two books entitled Grammatica. But the first to be called a grammarian as we now use the word was Praxiphanes of Mitylene, son of Dionysophanes. Zaleucus the Locrian is recorded as the first to make laws; others say Minos, son of Zeus, in the time of Lynceus. He lived after Danaus, in the eleventh generation from Inachus and Moses, as we shall show a little further on. Lycurgus, living many years after the capture of Ilium, gave laws to the Spartans a hundred and fifty years before the Olympiads; the dates of Solon we have given already.