The Hymn of Mesomedes on Antinous (Inscription of Courion, Mitford No. 104)

The citharode Mesomedes of Crete was one of the poets at the court of Hadrian. In late antiquity a selection of his poetry was assembled, and this corpus survived in transmission until medieval times, partly with musical notation. But of course the oeuvre of Mesomedes was much greater, as we see from two poems transmitted by the Greek Anthology and a lost encomium on Antinous, Hadrian’s paidika, as the Suda informs us. In his publication of the inscriptions of Courion (10 km west of Limassol) Mitford recognized clearly that the Antinous in Courion no. 104 must be the paidika of the Emperor Hadrian, and that the hymn in the inscription must be an encomium to Antinous, who drowned in the waters of the Nile in 130 AD. By comparing the metrics and the style of the encomium with the preserved poetry of Mesomedes, I shall argue that the hymn on Antinous is the encomium attested by the Suda for Mesomedes.