or Lassus, a Greek poet and musician, respecting whom only a few facts have been transmitted to us. He was the son of Charbinus, a native of Hermione, in Argolis, and flourished about the sixty-ninth olympiad (n. c. 504), during the reign of Darius I. king of Persia. Some of the ancients put Lasus in the number of the seven wise men of Greece, to the exclusion of Periander of Corinth. He was the first who wrote on the theory of music, and joined example to precept, being also an excellent musician. According to Clemens of Alexandria, he was the inventor of dithyrambic verse; he was at least the first to introduce it at the public games, and instituted prizes for the successful candidates. (Suidas, Aristoph. Schol. Vesp. 1401.) We are informed by Herodotus (vii. 6), that Lasus caused the poet Onomacritus to be banished from Athens by Hipparchus, because he interpolated the poetry of Museus with false prophecies. He was the contemporary of Simonides, and the instructor of Pindar. (Thom. Mag. Vit. Pind.) Atheneus (viii. 20) has preserved some witticisms of Lasus, which do not tend to raise him in our estimation. He quotes also a hymn to Ceres of Hermione, and an ode entitled the Centaurs, in neither of which he had made use of the letter S (x. 455; xiv. 624). (See Les Remarques de Burette sur le Dialogue du Plutarque touchant la Musique, in the Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriv. xv. p. 324.)