Peisander
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- For the Spartan general, see Peisander (general).
Peisander of Camirus in Rhodes, Ancient Greek epic poet, supposed to have flourished about 640 B.C.
He was the author of a Heracleia, in which he introduced a new conception of the hero Hercules costume, the lions skin and club taking the place of the older armor of the heroic era. He is also said to have fixed the number of the labors of Hercules at twelve. The work, which according to Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, yr. ch. 2) was simply a plagiarism from an unknown Pisinus of Lindus, enjoyed so high a reputation that the Alexandrian critics admitted the author to the epic canon. From an epigram (20) of Theocritus we learn that a statue was erected in honor of Peisander by his countrymen. He is to be distinguished from Peisander of Laranda in Lycia, who lived during the reign of Alexander Severus (AD. 208 to 205), and wrote a poem on the mixed marriages of gods and mortals, after the manner of the Eoiai of Hesiod.
See fragments in G. Kinkel, Epicorum graecorum fragmenta (1878); also F. G. Welcher, Kuleana Schriften, vol. i. (1844), on the twelve labors of Hercules in Peisander.
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- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
