Archeanassa or Archaeanassa (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 ), a native of Colophon

Colophon

Colophon was a city in the region of Lydia in antiquity dating from about the turn of the first millennium-BC. It was likely one the oldest of the twelve Ionian League cities, between Lebedos and Ephesus and its ruins are in the eponymously named modern region of Ionia.The city's name comes from...

, was a hetaera

Hetaera

In ancient Greece, hetaerae were courtesans, that is to say, highly educated, sophisticated companions...

 or courtesan living in Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 in the late 5th century BC. According to biographical sources about Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

, the philosopher as a young man was deeply in love with Archeanassa and addressed a four-line epigram

Epigram

An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....

 to her. The poem is quoted in full by Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...

 in his biography of Plato and by Athenaeus

Athenaeus

Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...

 in a survey of famous courtesans. The same poem is also found, in almost identical form, in the Byzantine compilation called Anthologia Palatina. In that source, although it is still addressed to Archeanassa, its authorship is attributed not to Plato but to Asclepiades

Asclepiades of Samos

Asclepiades of Samos was an ancient Greek epigrammatist and lyric poet. He was a friend of Theocritus, who flourished about 270 BC. He was the earliest and most important of the convivial and erotic epigrammists. Only a few of his compositions are actual inscriptions. Others sing the praises of...

. Modern scholars tend to accept the attribution to Plato as valid.