Agias or Hagias () of Troezen () was an ancient Greek poet celebrated in antiquity as the author of Nostoi (), an epic poem in five books on the history of the return of the Achaean heroes from Troy, which began with the cause of the misfortunes which befell the Achaeans on their way home and after their arrival, that is, with the outrage committed upon Cassandra and the Palladium; and the whole poem filled up the space which was left between the work of the poet Arctinus and the Odyssey.
The ancients themselves appear to have been uncertain about the author of this poem, for they refer to it simply by the name of Nostoi, and when they mention the author, they only call him "the writer of the Nostoi" ().Athenaeus, vii. p. 281Pausanias, Description of Greece x. 28. § 4, 29. § 2, 30. § 2Bibliotheca ii. 1. § 5Scholiast, on the Odyssey iv. 12Scholiast, ad Aristoph. Equit. 1332Lucian, De Saltat. 46 Hence some writers attributed the Nostoi to Homer,Suda, s.v. Anthol. Planud. iv. 30 while others call its author a Colophonian.Eustathius of Thessalonica, on the Odyssey xvi. 118 Similar poems, and with the same title, were written by other poets also, such as Eumelus of Corinth,Scholiast, ad Pind. Ol. xiii. 31 Anticleides of Athens,Athenaeus iv. p. 157, ix. p. 466 Cleidemus,Athenaeus xiii. p. 609 and Lysimachus of Alexandria.Athenaeus iv. p. 158Scholiast, on Apollonius of Rhodes i. 558 Where the Nostoi is mentioned without a name, it was generally understood to have been the work of this Agias.
His name was formerly written Augias through a mistake of the first editor of the Excerpta of Proclus. This misreading was corrected by Friedrich Thiersch,Friedrich Thiersch, Acta Philol. Monac. ii. p. 584 from the Codex Monacensis, which in one passage has "Agias", and in another "Hagias". The name itself does not occur in early Greek writers, unless it be supposed that the "Egias" or "Hegias" () in Clement of AlexandriaClement of Alexandria, Stromata vi. p. 622 and Pausanias,Pausanias, Description of Greece i. 2. § 1 are only different forms of the same name.
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