Dionysius Scytobrachion

Dionysius Scytobrachion, also known as Dionysius of Mytilene, was an ancient writer from the capital of Lesbos. He wrote stories set in the area we now call Libya. In his tales, he described the Olympian gods as people who lived long ago, and he wrote about famous characters like the Amazons, Alexander the Great, and the Argonauts.

One of his important works is called Argonautica, which tells the story of the ship Argo. In his version, Hercules is the captain instead of Jason, which is different from most stories we know today. Other writers, like Diodorus Siculus, used Dionysius's stories as sources for their own work.

We don’t know exactly when Dionysius lived. Some people thought he might have been around the same time as Marcus Antonius Gnipho in the first century BCE, but that doesn’t seem right. A piece of paper with part of his Argonautica that dates back to the late third century BCE shows he must have lived no later than around 250 BCE.