Pancrates

and PANCRA'TIUS (Παγκρατης, Παγκράτιος); these names are so much mixed up together by the ancient writers, that it is best to place under one head the few notices which we have respecting them.

1. An epigrammatic poet, who had a place in the Garland of Meleager, and three of whose epigrams are preserved in the Greek Anthology. (Brunck, Anal. vol. i. p. 259; Jacobs, Anth. Graec. vol.i. p. 191.) We have no other indication of his time than that afforded by his being in Meleager's collection, which shows that he lived in or before the first century of our era. Some writers identify him with the following poet:--

2. A poet or musician, who appears to have been eminent in his art, by the notice of him in Plutarch, who says that "he usually avoided the chromatic genus of music, not through ignorance of it, but from choice, and imitated, as he himself said, the style of Pindar and Simonides, and in a word that which is called the ancient by those of the present day." (De Mus. 20, p. 1137,e.) This notice seems to imply that Pancrates lived either at or just before the time of Plutarch, but whether he was simply a musician, or a lyric poet, or a tragedian, the context leaves us altogether in doubt.

3. Of Arcadia, the author of a poem on fishery (ἁλιευτικά or θαλάσσια ἔργα), a considerable fragment of which is preserved by Athenaeus. (Ath. i. p. 13b., vii. pp. 283, a. c., 305, c., 321, f.) Several critics imagine him to be identical with one or both of the two preceding poets. (See Burette, in the Mem. de l' Acad. des Inscr. vol. xix. p. 441.) Athenaeus quotes two lines, in elegiac metre, from the first book of the Κογχορηΐς of Pancrates, whom the subject of the poem and the simple mention of the name in Athenaeus would lead us to identify with the author of the ἁλιευτικά, while the metre suggests the probability that he was also the same as the epigrammatist.

4. An Alexandrian poet in the time of Hadrian, who, in acknowledgment of a curious discovery with which Pancrates made him acquainted in such a manner as to involve a compliment to himself and Antinoüs, gave him his maintenance in the Museum of Alexandria. (Ath. xv. p. 677d. e.)

5. Of Athens, a cynic philosopher in the time of Hadrian and the Antonines. Philostratius relates, that when Lollianus was in danger of being stoned by the Athenians in a tumult about bread, Pancrates quieted the mob by exclaiming that Lollianus was not an ἀρτοπώλης but a λογοπώλης (Philostr. Vit. Sophist. p. 526; Lollianus). Alciphron also mentions a cynic philosopher of this name (3.55. p. 406).

6. A sophist and rhetorician, who wrote a commentary (ὑπόμνημα) on the τεχνή ῥητορική of Minucianus. (Suid. s.v. Eudoc. p. 353.) [P.S]