Athenaeus - Deipnosophists Book XV
Book XV. 683 b
First, roses which Midas of Odonia, when he left his realm in Asia, grew in the Emathian* glebes, roses ever luxuriant with sixty petals all round.
* Emathia, poetic name of Macedonia.
Book XV 684 e
A flower called ambrosia is recorded by Carystius in Historical Notes as follows: “Nicander says that the so-called ambrosia grows from the head of Alexander’s statue on the island of Cos.”
Book XV. 696 e – 697 a
Further, there is no refrain, characteristic of the paean, as there is in the true paean written in honour of the Spartan Lysander, which Duris, in his work entitled Chronicles of Samos, says was sung in Samos. A paean, too, is the poem in honour of Craterus of Macedon composed by Alexinus the dialectician, according to Hermippus, the disciple of Callimachus, in the first book of his work On Aristotle. This, also, is sung at Delphi to the accompaniment of a lyre played by a boy. Again, the poem sung by the Corinthians in honour of Agemon of Corinth, Aleyone’s father, has the true paeanic refrain. It is quoted by Polemon the geographer in his Letter to Aranthius. So, too, that in honour of the Ptolemy who first became king of Egypt, sung by the people of Rhodes, is a paean. For it has the refrain ie paian, according to Gorgon in his work On the Rhodian Festivals. To Antigonus and to Demetrius, says Philochorus, the Athenians sang paeans composed by Hermocles of Cyzicus; a contest of all the writers of paeans was held, in which Hermocles was adjudged the best.