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Lycophron

Lycophron

c. 320 BCEc. 250 BCE · Alexandria

Lycophron (3rd century BCE), born at Chalcis in Euboea, was a Greek tragic poet and scholar who worked at Alexandria, where he was counted among the 'Pleiad' of tragedians and was entrusted with arranging the comedies in the Library, producing a treatise on comedy. He is best known for the 'Alexandra,' an extraordinarily obscure and learned poem in which the prophetess Cassandra foretells the fall of Troy and later history, famous for its difficulty. Some scholars question whether the surviving poem is entirely his work, since parts seem to allude to the rise of Roman power.

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AlexandriaEgypt

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About Alexandria

Alexandria (al-Iskandariyya) is the great Mediterranean port-city of northern Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and a leading centre of learning in antiquity. After the Muslim conquest of Egypt (642) it remained a major commercial and scholarly hub; the Shadhili Sufi Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari (d. 1309) took his nisba from the city, and the modernist reformer Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) was active in Egypt's intellectual life there and in Cairo.

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Lycophron’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Lycophron’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

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