The great name of Theocritus is attached[108] to pieces, not inelegant but very distinctly _banal_, on Anacreon, Epicharmus, Archilochus, Hipponax; and that of the lesser Alcæus (not the great one of Mitylene, but the much lesser Messenian) to some praises of Homer,[109] of Hesiod,[110] and again of Hipponax. Dioscorides[111] extols Sappho, defends the much-injured Philænis against those who (to judge from confirmatory testimony to the same effect elsewhere) played upon her the same ignoble trick by which a certain Frenchman, in days nearer our own, tried to blast the fair fame of Luisa Sigea of Toledo. He is complimentarily orthodox as to Sophocles, but not much less complimentary to Sositheus, of whom we know little, and to Macho, of whom, thanks to Athenæus, we know that he exercised his wits upon putting naughty anecdotes into uncommonly pedestrian verse. An epigram of the Grammarian Crates[112] refers to the controversy on the respective merits of Chœrilus, Antimachus, and Homer, and would have been very welcome if it had given us some information on that matter; but as it is, the subject is a mere pretext to enable Crates to “talk greasily.” Antipater of Sidon,[113] starting from the childish debate about the birthplace of Homer, turns it into something better by his conclusion— “Thy country is great Heaven: there was to thee No mortal mother, but Calliope”; and he subsequently celebrates Sappho, “Erinna of few verses,” and Pindar, returning to the same subjects (except Erinna) in another batch, and adding a group on Anacreon (who, as fertile in commonplaces, is a favourite subject of the Anthologians), Stesichorus, and Ibycus. Footnote 108: i. 98. Footnote 109: i. 238. Footnote 110: i. 241. Footnote 111: i. 250-252.