Xeno'critus
（
*Ceno/kritos), literary.
1. Of Locri Epizephyrii, in Lower Italy, a musician and lyric poet, who is mentioned by Plutarch (
de Mus. 9, p. 1134b.), as one of the leaders of the second school of Dorian music, which was founded by Thaletas, and as a composer of Paeans.
A little further on. Plutarch says that some ascribed to him Dithyrambs on heroic subjects, and that it was disputed whether he wrote Paeans.
The discrepancy between this passage and the former is easily explained. Plutarch is here following Glaucus, on whose authority lie adds that Xenocritus lived later than Thaletas. [THALES.] The common text has
Ξενοκράτους twice in this paragraph; but
Ξενοκρίτου is evidently the true reading : there are other examples of the same error; as in the passage of Diogenes referred to under XENOCRATES, No. 5, where it is almost certain that Xenocritus is meant; as Aristoxenus, who mentioned him, wrote expressly on these early musicians. (See Plut.
l.100.11.）
Xenocritus appears to have been the founder of the Locrian style of lyric poetry, which was a modification of the Aeolian; and, if the view just given of the passage of Diogenes be correct, we must ascribe to him some, and perhaps the first, of the
Λοκρικά ᾁσματα, or erotic odes, in imitation of Sappho and Erinna.
He is said to have been blind from his birth. (Heracleid. Pont.
Pol. Fr. xxix.)
The whole subject of the Locrian school of poetry is fully discussed by Böckh (
de Metr. Pind. pp. 279, &c) and by Ulrici (
Gesch. d. Hellen. Dichtk. vol. ii. Lect. 26, pp. 468, foll.; see also Müller,
Gesch. d. Griech. Litt. vol. i. p. 291, vol. ii. p. 290.)
