A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

650 RHESUS, RHIANUS.
Thracian. The name of the Thracian kings appears In later writers Rhesus is described as a son of
under the form of Rhascuporis, both on coins and Strymon and Euterpe, or Calliope, or Terpsichore.
in the best writers, while on the coins of the kings (Apollod. i. 3. ~ 4; Conon, Nlarrat. 4; Eustath.
of Bosporus we always have the form Rhescuporis. ad Hornm. p. 817; Eurip. Rhesus.) [L. S.]
(Eckhel, vol. ii. pp. 375-377.) RHEXE'NOR ('P7SiJvwp), two mythical perRHESCUPORIS I., was king in the reign of Ti- sonages, one the father of Chalciope, and the
berius, as is evident from the annexed coin, by second a son of Nausithous the king of the
which we learn that he assumed the name of Phaeacians, and accordingly a brother of AlciTiberius Julius. He continued king at the acces- nous. (Apollod. iii. 15. ~ 6; Hoem. Od. vii. 64,
sion of Caligula, as both the name and head of that &c.) [L. S.]
emperor appears on his coins; but he must have RHIA'NUS ('PLavo's), of Crete, was a distindied or been driven out of his kingdom soon after- guished Alexandrian poet and grammarian, ill the
wards, as Caligula made Polemon king both of latter part of the third century B.C. According
Pontus and Bosporus in A. D. 39. [POLEMON, P. to Suidas (s. v.), lie was a native of Bene, or, as
434, b.] some said, of Ceraea, two obscure cities in Crete,
while others made him a native of Ithome in
Messenia, a statement easily explained by the
supposition that Rhianus spent some time at
Ithome, while collecting materials for his poem on
the Messenian Wars. He was at first, as Suidas
n further tells us, a slave and keeper of the palaestra;
but afterwards, having been instructed, he became
a grammarian. The statement of Suidas, that he
was contemporary with Eratosthenes, not only indicates the time at which he lived, but suggests
the probability that he lived at Alexandria in perCOIN OF RHESCUPORIS l. sonal and literary connection with Eratosthenes.
On the ground of this statement, Clinton fixes the
RHESCUPORIS II., a contemporary of Donmitian, age of Rhianus at B. C. 222.
whose head appears on the annexed coin. He wrote, according to the common text of
Suidas, eSl.tperpa 7roei1ara,'HpaKcXea'a e' iCAoilS
8', where there can be little doubt that we should
read edkasErpa 7roirsuara, since the epic poems of
Rhianus were certainly those of his works to
l___ //_ ) which he chiefly owed his fame. Thus Athenaeus
_..._i~ % 4y) expressly designates him ero'rolos (xi. p. 499 d.).
His poems are mentioned by Suetonius (Tib. 70),
as among those productions of the Alexandrian
school, which the emperor Tiberius admired and
imitated.
The subject of the epic poems of Rhianus were
COIN OFT RHESCUPORIS II. taken either from the old mythology, or from the
RHESCUPORIS III., a contemporary of Caracalla annals of particular states and countries. Of the
and Alexander Severus, whose heads appear on his former class were his'HpabcAELa (not'HpaKeas,
coins.;as Suidas has it), and of the latter his'AXaefca,'HAiaKcd, Os'aeeKLd, and Meoer'7,laKad. It is quite
uncertain what was the subject of his poem entitled 4'/jus1, which is only known to us by a single
line quoted by Stephanus of Byzantium (s. v.
v b)0 i I'ApacKvvos). For a full account of the extant
fragments of these poems, and for a discussion of
~na.~~u~,'~,~P" ~ > their subjects, the reader is referred to Meineke's
essay on Rhianus, in his Analecta Aleiandirina.
(See also Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. i. pp. 734, 735;
Clinton, F. H. vol iii. pp. 512, 513.)
COIN OF RHESCOPORIS III. Like most of the Alexandrian poets, Rhianus
was also a writer of epigrams. Ten of his epigrams
There was also a Rhescuporis IV., who was a are preserved in the Palatine Anthology, and one
contemporary of Valerian, and a Rhescuporis V., a by Athenaeus. They treat of amatory subjects
contemporary of Constantine the Great. with much freedom; but they all excel in elegance
RHESUS ('Paeos). 1. A river-god in Bithynia, of language, cleverness of invention, and simplicity
one of the sons of Oceanus and Thetys. (Hes. of expression. He had a place in the Garland of
Theoq. 340; Hom. II. xii. 21; comp. Strab. xiii. Meleager. (Brunck, Anal. vol. i. p. 479, ii. p. 526;
p. 590.) Jacob's Anth. Gracec. vol. i. p. 229, vol. xiii. pp. 945
2. A son of king Eioneus in Thrace, and an -947; Meineke, pp. 206-212.)
ally of the Trojans in their war with the Greeks. Respecting the grammatical works of Rhianus,
He possessed horses white as snow -and swift as we only know that he is frequently quoted in the
the wind, which were carried off by night by Sclholia on Homer, as one of the commentators on
Odysseus and Diomedes, the latter of whom mur- the poet.
dered Rhesus himself in his sleep. (Hom. I. x. The fragments of Rhianus have been printed in
435, 495, &c.; Virg. Acn. i. 469, with Serv. note). most of the old collections of the Greek poets (see