Mesomedes
Μεσομήδης
(Μεσομήδης), a lyric and epigrammatic poet under Hadrian and the Antonines, was a native of Crete, and a freedman of Hadrian, whose favourite Antinous he celebrated in a poem. (Suid. s. v.) A salary, which he had received from Hadrian, was diminished by Antoninus Pius. (Capit. Ant. Pius, 7.) Three poems of his are preserved in the Greek Anthology. (Brunck, Anal. vol. ii. p. 292; Jacobs, Anth. Graec. vol. iii. p. 6, vol. xiii. p. 917; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. pp. 130, 131.)
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.