Iamelus

A similar personification to that of Linus, and hence also called a son of Apollo and Calliope, and the inventor of the song Ialemus, which was a kind of dirge, or at any rate a song of a very serious and mournful character, and is only mentioned as sung on most melancholy occasions.1

In later times this kind of poetry lost its popularity, and was ridiculed by the comic poets. Ialemus then became synonymous with cold and frosty poetry, and was used in this sense proverbially.2

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References

Notes

  1. Aeschylus. Suppliant Maidens, 106; Euripides. Hercules Furens, 109; Suppliants, 283.
  2. Scholiast on Euripides' Orestes, 1375; on Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica iv, 1304; Zenobius, iv, 39.

Source

  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.