Rhianus (
Greek: Ῥιανὸς ὁ Κρής) was a
Greek poet and grammarian, a native of
Crete, friend and contemporary of
Eratosthenes (275 BC – 195 BC). The
Suidas says he was at first a
slave and overseer of a
palaestra, but obtained a good education later in life and devoted himself to grammatical studies, probably in
Alexandria. He prepared a new recension of the
Iliad and
Odyssey, characterized by sound judgment and poetical taste. His bold atheteses are frequently mentioned in the scholia. He also wrote
epigrams, eleven of which, preserved in the
Greek Anthology and
Athenaeus, show elegance and vivacity. But he was chiefly known as a writer of epics (mythological and ethnographical), the most celebrated of which was the
Messeniaca in six books, dealing with the
Second Messenian War and the exploits of its central figure
Aristomenes, and used by
Pausanias in his fourth book as a trustworthy authority. Other similar poems were the
Achaica,
Eliaca, and
Thessalica. The
Heracleia was a long mythological epic, probably an imitation of the poem of the same name by
Panyasis, containing the same number of books (fourteen).