Theo'lytus
（
*Qeo/lutos), of Methymna, in Lesbos, an epic poet of an unknown, but certainly not an early period, who is mentioned once by the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, and twice by Athenaeus.
The latter author, in one passage (vii. p. 296a, b.) quotes three lines from his
Βακχικὰ ἔπη, that is, an epic poem on the adventures of Dionysus, to whose contest with the sea-god Glaucus, his rival in the love of Ariadne, the lines quoted by Athenaeus refer.
The other reference to Theolytus is a quotation from him,
ἐν δευτέπῳ Ὤρων (Ath. xi. p. 470c.), not
Ὡρῶν, as the reading was before Schweighäuser, who shows that here, and in other references to similar works, the genitive is not that of
ὧρα, but of
ὧρος, a word of the same meaning as
ὧρα, but used in the plural in the specific sense of
Annals. (See Liddell and Scott, and Seiler and Jacobitz,
s. v.) Another correction made by Schweighäuser in this latter passage is the restoration of the true form of the poet's name, which Casaubon had altered to
Θεόκλυτος. (Plehn,
Lesbiaca, p. 201.)
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P.S]
