A.P. 6.314–320 are ascribed to ‘Nicodemus of Heraclea’ in the Palatine and Planudean manuscripts. 6.323, omitted by Planudes, has the heading τοῦ αὐτοῦ in P, meaning Leonides of Alexandria, but this is obviously a mistake; the epigram is a palindrome, like those in the foregoing sequence. It has been restored to Nicodemus by all modern editors. This author's name recurs in only one other place: 9.53 Νικοδήμου οἰ δὲ Βάσσου C, Νικομήδους οἰ δὲ Βάσσου Pl; Pl's Νικομήδους was an easy mistake, but there is no knowing how the name of Bassus, one of the authors in Philip's Garland, came to be attached to this palindromic epigram.

There is no other information about Nicodemus. His date is unknown, and editors from Jacobs to Beckby have refrained from guessing. Geffcken in RE suggested that Nicodemus might be a contemporary of Leonides of Alexandria, merely on the ground that palindromes might be popular in an age which enjoyed the arithmetical ingenuities of Leonides.

It is unsafe to draw any conclusion about the author's date from the extraordinary form πόσσις, for πόσις, in 6.323. It would have been as easy to write e.g. σύзυξ, so presumably the author saw nothing amiss in πόσσις. Isolated examples of eccentric prosody in literary epigrams can be quoted from the second century b.c. onwards (see Rufinus pp. 40–3), and although we may judge πόσσις to be a particularly irresponsible and offensive form, it is prudent to refrain from using it as an argument for a relatively late date.