1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sotades

SOTADES, Greek satirist, of Maronea in Thrace (or of Crete), chief representative of the writers of coarse satirical poems, called κίναιδοι,^[1] composed in the Ionic dialect and in a metre named after him “sotadic.” He lived in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II. Philadelphus (285-247 B.C.). For a violent attack on the king, on the occasion of his marriage to his own sister Arsinoë, Sotades was imprisoned, but escaped to the island of Caunus, where he was afterwards captured by Patroclus, Ptolemy's admiral, shut up in a leaden chest, and thrown into the sea (Athenaeus xiv. p. 620; Plutarch, De educatione puerorum, 14).

Only a few genuine fragments of Sotades have been preserved (see J. G. Hermann, Elementa doctrinae metricae, 1816); those in Stobaeus are generally considered spurious. Ennius translated some poems of this kind, included in his book of satires, under the name of Sota.

1. The word is also used of the dancers in indecent ballets, to which such poems were probably written as an accompaniment. In Greek and Latin authors κίναιδος (cinaedus) generally means “catamite.”