Quintus Curtius Rufus
Lasus of Hermione, who lived during the second half of the sixth century BCE, is the most ancient author of a lipogram. This makes the lipogram, according to Quintus Curtius Rufus, "the most ancient systematic artifice of Western literature". Lasus did not like the sigma, and excluded it from one of his poems, entitled "Ode to the Centaurs," of which nothing remains; as well as a "Hymn to Demeter", of which the first verse remains: