PARTHENIUS, of Nicaea in Bithynia, Greek grammarian and poet. He was taken prisoner in the Mithradatic War and carried to Rome (72 B.C.); subsequently he visited Neapolis, where he taught Virgil Greek. Parthenius was a writer of elegies, especially dirges, and of short epic poems. The pseudo-Virgilian Moretum and Ciris were imitated from his Μυττωτός and Μεταμορφώσεις. His Ἐρωτικὰ παθήματα is still extant, containing a collection of 36 love-stories which ended unhappily, taken from different historians and poets. As Parthenius generally quotes his authorities, these stories are valuable as affording information on the Alexandrian poets and grammarians.
See E. Martini in Mythographi graeci, vol. ii. (1902, in Teubner Series); poetical fragments in A. Meineke, Analecta alexandrina (1853).