1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Polycrates of Athens

POLYCRATES, Athenian sophist and rhetorician, flourished in the 4th century B.C. He taught at Athens, and afterwards in Cyprus. He composed declamations on paradoxical themes an Encomium on Clytaemnestra, an Accusation of Socrates, an Emomium on Busiris (a mythical king of Egypt, notorious for his inhumanity); also declamations on mice, pots and counters. His Enoomium on Busiris was sharply criticized by Isocrates, in a work still extant, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus characterizes his style as frigid, vulgar and inelegant.