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Polycrates (Sophist)

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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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 Encomium on Busiris (a mythical king of Egypt, notorious for his inhumanity); also declamations on mice, pots and counters. His Encomium on Busiris was sharply criticized by Isocrates, in a work still extant, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus characterizes his style as frigid, vulgar and inelegant.