Bassus
1. Is named by Ovid as having formed one of the select circle of his poetical associates, and as celebrated for his iambic lays, " Ponticus heroo, Bassus quoque clarus iambo," but is not noticed by Quintilian nor by any other Roman writer, unless he be the Bassus familiarly addressed by Propertius. (Eleg. 1.4.) Ience is is probable that friendship may have exaggerated his fame and merits. Osann argues from a passage in Apuleius the grammarian (De Orthograph. § 43), that Battus, and not Bassus, is the true reading in the above line from the Tristia, but his reasonings have been successfully combated by Weichert. (De L. Vario Poeta, Excurs. ii. De Bassis quibusdam, 'c.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.