Matron of Pitana

Matron of Pitane was a Greek parodist, probably active in the later 4th century BCE. He is best known for his "Deipnon Attikon" ("Attic Dinner-Party"), a comic hexameter parody of Homeric epic that recasts a lavish Athenian banquet in the grand language of the Iliad and Odyssey. Over a hundred lines survive, preserved largely through quotation in Athenaeus's "Deipnosophists," along with a handful of shorter fragments. His mock-epic feasting verse makes him an important early representative of the Greek parodic tradition, though almost nothing is reliably known about his life beyond his name and origin in Pitane.