ALCÆUS, an Athenian tragic poet, and, as some think, the first composer of tragedies. He renounced his native country Mitylene, and passed for an Athenian. He left ten pieces, one of which was Pasiphaë, that which he produced when he disputed with Aristophanes, in the fourth year of the 97th Olympiad.
There is another ALCÆUS mentioned in Plutarch, perhaps the same whom Porphyrius mentions as a composer of satirical iambics and epigrams, and who wrote a poem concerning the plagiarism of Euphorus the historian. He lived in the 145th Olympiad.
We are told likewise of one ALCÆUS, a Messenian, who lived in the reign of Vespasian and Titus. We know not which of these it was who suffered for his lewdness a very singular kind of death, which gave occasion to the following epitaph: