Aristaenetus

(Ἀρισταίνετος).

1. Of Dymae, an Achaean general, the commander of the Achaean cavalry on the right wing in the battle of Mantineia, B. C. 207. (Plb. 11.11.) [Aristaenus.]

2. The author of a work on Phaselis, of which the first book is quoted by Stephanus Byz. (s. v. Γέλα.) He appears also to have written on Egypt and the good things of the Nile. (Eudoc. Viol. p. 67.) Fabricius (Bibl. Graec. ii. p. 697) mentions several other persons of this name.

(Ἀρισταίνετος), the reputed author of two books of Love-Letters (ἐπιστολαὶ ἐρωτικαί).

Of the author nothing is known. It has been conjectured, that he is the same as Aristaenetus of Nicaea, to whom several of Libanius' Epistles are addressed, and who lost his life in the earthquake in Nicomedia, A. D. 358. (Comp. Ammian. Marcell. 17.7.) That this supposition, however, is erroneous, is proved by the mention of the celebrated pantomimus Caramallus in one of the epistles, who is mentioned in the fifth century by Sidonius Apolloniaris (23.267) as his contemporary. Sidonius died A. D. 484. Works Love-Letters

These Letters are taken almost entirely from Plato, Lucian, Philostratus, and Plutarch; and so owe to their reputed author Aristaenetus nothing but the connexion. They are short unconnected stories of love adventures ; and if the language in occasional sentences, or even paragraphs, is terse and elegant, yet on the whole they are only too insipid to be disgusting. Editions

These were first edited by Sambucus, (Antwerp, 1566), and subsequently by de Pauw, (Utrecht, 1736), Abresch, (Zwoll. 1749), and Boissonade (1822). [C.T.A]

(Ἀρισταίνετος). A Greek grammarian and rhetorician, of Nicaea in Bithynia, friend of Libanius, who praises him in the highest terms; he was killed in an earthquake at Nicomedia, A.D. 358. His name is erroneously attached to a collection, probably composed in the fifth or sixth century, of erotic Epistles, feeble imitations of Alciphron, loose in tone and declamatory in style. The text and a Latin version are contained in the Didot collection of the Epistolographi Graeci (Paris, 1873). See Novels and Romances.