Python
（
Πύθων), literary.
1. Of Catana, a dramatic poet of the time of
Alexander, whom he accompanied into Asia, and whose army he entertained with a satyric drama, when they were celebrating the Dionysia on the banks of the Hydespes. The drama was in ridicule of Harpalus and the Athenians.
It is twice mentioned by Athenaeus, who has preserved nearly twenty lines of it. (Ath. xiii. p. 586d., p. 595e. f., p. 596a,) In the second of these passages, Athenaeus mentions the poet as either of Catana or of Byzantium ; and it seems very doubtful whether he was confounded with the Byzantine rhetorician of the same name, who makes some figure in the history of Philip and
Alexander, or whether he was really the same person. Some writers ascribed the drama to
Alexander, but no doubt erroneously. Respecting the meaning of the title of the play,
Ἀγήν, there are various conjectures, all of then very uncertain. (Casaub.
de Poes. Sat. Graec. pp. 150, 151, with Rambach's Note; Fabric.
Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. pp. 319, 320; Wagner, F. G.,
Poetarum Trag. Graec. Fragmenta, pp. 134-136, in Didot's
Bibl. Script. Graec. Paris, 1846.)
