Achaeus of Eretria was a Greek playwright author of tragedies and satyr plays, variously said to have written 24, 30, or 44 plays, of which 19 titles are known, some of which include Adrastus, Linus, Cycnus, Eumenides, Philoctetes, Pirithous, Theseus, and Oedipus. His first play was produced in 447 BC and won a victory. A quote in Aristophanes' The Frogs suggests he was dead by 405 BC. Some classicists suggest that his winning only one prize was due to him not an Athenian by birth, and the men of Athens were loath to honor any but their own fellow-citizens. Achaeus of Eretria belongs to the classic age, but was not himself a classic, though his satyric plays were much admired for their spirited style, albeit somewhat labored and lacking in clearness. The philosopher Menedemus thought his plays second only to Aeschylus, he was part of the Alexandrian Canon, and Didymus wrote a commentary on him. Athenaeus (10.451c) describes him as having a lucid style, but with tendencies to obscurity. Athenaeus also claimed that Euripides took a line from Achaeus, while Aristophanes quotes him twice, in The Frogs and The Wasps.
Agathon (c. 448-400 BCE) was an Athenian tragic poet and friend of Euripides and Plato. He is best known from his mention by Aristophanes (Thesmophoriazusae) and in Plato's Symposium, which describes the banquet given to celebrate his obtaining a prize for his first tragedy (416). He was the long time (10-15 years) beloved of Pausanias, also mentioned in the Symposium and Protagoras. Pausanias followed Agathon to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedon, who was recruiting playwrights. This is where Agathon probably died. He introduced certain innovations, and Aristotle (Poetica, 9) tells us that the plot of his Antho was original, not, as usually, borrowed from mythological subjects.
He is introduced, by Plato, as a handsome young man, well dressed, of polished manners, courted by the fashion, wealth and wisdom of Athens, and dispensing hospitality with ease and refinement. The Epideixis, in praise of love, which he recites in the Symposium, is full of the artificial and rhetorical expressions which might be expected from a former pupil of Gorgias. Aristotle tells us that he was the first to introduce into the drama arbitrary choral songs, which had nothing to do with the subject, and that he wrote pieces with fictitious names, which appear to have been half way between the idyl and comedy. His intimacy with Aristophanes doubtless saved him from many well-deserved strictures, though in one of his comedies, the latter burlesques his flowery style, representing him as a delicate and effeminate youth, and it may be only for the sake of punning on his name that he makes Dionysus call him a noble poet.
Agathon was a friend of Euripides, accompanying him to the court of Archelaus of Macedon, where he died about 402 BCE. He had all the faults, without the genius, of his famous contemporary, and these he carried to excess, attempting to surprise the spectators with unexpected developments and strange, improbable dénouments. Add to this his fondness for epigram, antitheses and other rhetorical embellishments, after the fashion of Gorgias, and no wonder that whatever he possessed of ability was smothered beneath his mannerisms. Yet, of the latter, he appears to have been proud, considering them essential to his verse; for when asked to purge himself of such blemishes, he replied: "You do not see that that would be to purge Agathon's play of Agathon." His poetry was full of trope, inflection and metaphor; glittering with sparkling ideas and flowing softly along, with harmonious words and nice construction, but lacking in the element of truly virile expression and deficient in manly thought and vigor. With him begins the decline of tragic art in its higher sense.
Alcman (7th cent. BC) was an Ancient Greek choral lyric poet from Sparta. He is the earliest representative of the Alexandrinian canon of the nine lyric poets (the others being Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Pindar and Bacchylides). There were six books of Alcman's choral lyric in antiquity (ca. 50-60 hymns), but they were lost at the threshold of the Medieval Age, and Alcman was known only through fragmentary quotations in other Greek authors until the discovery of a papyrus in 1855 in a tomb near the second pyramid at Saqqâra. The fragment, which is now kept at Louvre, contains ca. 100 verses of a so-called partheneion, i.e. a song performed by a chorus of young unmarried women. In the 1960's, many more fragments have been discovered and published in the collection of the Egyptian papyri from Oxyrhynchus. Most of these fragments contain partheneions, but there are also other kinds of hymns among them.
Most od the fragments come from partheneions, i.e. hymns, which were song by choruses of unmarried women 'maiden'. This genre has been described exhaustively by the French scholar Claude Calame (1977). The songs were performed during festivals in connection with the initiation rites of the girls. Alcman has probably composed choral songs for the boys as well, but the Hellenistic philologists seem to have been more interested in the partheneions.
In the fragments, the girls often express homoerotic feelings, and the ancient authors tell that the Spartan women were involved in same sex relationships, which may be compared to the well-known pederasty among Greek males. The slightly younger poetress Sappho from Lesbos (after whom Lesbian love was named) describes similar relationships in her monodic poetry. It remains open if the relationship also had a physical side and, if so, what sort. Yet, the very fact that the love was codified by a man, Alcman, and even proclaimed during the festivals of the city, is a clear indication that the romantic feelings of the girls were not tolerated silently, but promoted loudly.
The choral lyric of Alcman were meant for the cult. The Spartan historian Sosibius (ca. 200 BC) tells (according to Athenaeus):" The chorus-leaders carry [the Thyreatic crowns] in commemoration of the victory at Thyrea at the festival, when they are also celebrating the Gymnopaedia. There are three choruses, in the front a chorus of boys - to the right a chorus of old men and to the left a chorus of men; they dance naked and sing the lieders of Thaletas and Alcman and the paeans of Dionysodotus the Laconian." In other words, the songs of Alcman were performed by new girls and boys at certain occasions until the Hellenistic Age. Each choral song was a kind of drama with certain roles, e.g. the role of the choral leader or the role of the beautiful girl standing in a special relationship with the chorus leader.
Alcaeus (Alkaios) of Mitylene (ca. 620 BC-6th century BC), Greek lyric poet, was an older contemporary and an alleged lover of Sappho, with whom he exchanged poems. He was of the aristocratic governing class of Mytilene, the main city of Lesbos, where his life was entangled with its political disputes and internal feuds. He sided with his class against the upstart "tyrants" who set themselves up in Mytilene as the voice of the people. He was in consequence obliged to spend a considerable time in exile. He is said to have become reconciled to Pittacus, the ruler set up by the populist party, and to have returned eventually to Lesbos. The date of his death is unknown.
When his poems were edited in Hellenistic Alexandria, they filled ten scrolls; the poetry of Alcaeus has survived only in quotations: "Fighting men are the city's fortress" and the like, so judging him, rather than his high reputation in antiquity, is like judging Ben Jonson through Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. The subjects of his poems, which were composed in the Aeolic Greek dialect, were of various kinds: hymns to the gods; martial or political comment, sometimes quite personal; and lastly love-songs and drinking-songs, the kind of poetry that would be read aloud at a symposium. Alexandrian scholars agreed that Alcaeus was the second greatest lyric poet among the canonic nine. The considerable number of fragments extant (see link), and the imitations of Alcaeus in Latin by Horace, who regarded Alcaeus as his great model, help us to form a fair idea of the character of his poems.
Alexander Aetolus, of Pleuron in Aetolia, Greek poet and man of letters, the only representative of Aetolian poetry, flourished about 280 BC.When living in Alexandria he was commissioned by Ptolemy Philadelphus to arrange the tragedies and satyric dramas in the library; some ten years later he took up his residence at the court of Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedonia. His reputation as a tragic poet was so high that he was allotted a place in the Alexandrian tragic Pleiad; we only know the title of one play (Astragalistae.) He also wrote short epics, epigrams and elegies, the considerable fragments of which show learning and eloquence.
Anacreon (born ca. 570 BC) was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets. He was born at Teos, an Ionian city on the coast of Asia Minor. Little more is known of his life, but it is likely that he shared the voluntary exile of the mass of his fellow-townsmen who sailed to Abdera in Thrace, where they founded a colony, rather than remaining behind to surrender their city to Harpagus, one of Cyrus the Great's generals. Cyrus was, at the time (545 BC), besieging the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Anacreon seems to have taken part in the fighting, in which, on his own admission, he did not distinguish himself.
From Thrace he removed to the court of Polycrates of Samos. He is said to have acted as tutor to Polycrates; that he enjoyed the tyrant's confidence we learn on the authority of Herodotus (iii.121), who represents the poet as sitting in the royal chamber when audience was given to the Persian herald. In return for his favour and protection, Anacreon wrote many complimentary odes upon his patron. Like his fellow-lyric poet, Horace, who was one of his great admirers, and in many respects a kindred spirit, Anacreon seems to have been made for the society of courts.
On the death of Polycrates, Hipparchus, who was then in power at Athens and inherited the literary tastes of his father Peisistratus, sent a special embassy to fetch the popular poet to Athens in a galley of fifty oars. Here he became acquainted with the poet Simonides, and other members of the brilliant circle which had gathered round Hipparchus. When this circle was broken up by the assassination of Hipparchus, Anacreon seems to have returned to his native town of Teos, where, according to a metrical epitaph ascribed to his friend Simonides, he died and was buried. According to others, before returning to Teos, he accompanied Simonides to the court of Echecrates, a Thessalian dynast of the house of the Aleuadae. Lucian mentions Anacreon amongst his instances of the longevity of eminent men, as having completed eighty-five years. If an anecdote given by Pliny the Elder (Nat. Hist. vii. 7) is to be trusted, he was choked at last by a grape-stone, but the story has an air of mythical adaptation to the poet's habits, which makes it somewhat apocryphal.
Anacreon was for a long time popular at Athens, where his statue was to be seen on the Acropolis, together with that of his friend Xanthippus, the father of Pericles. On several coins of Teos he is represented holding a lyre in his hand, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing. A marble statue found in 1835 in the Sabine district, and now in the Villa Borghese, is said to represent Anacreon.
Poetry
Anacreon had a reputation as a composer of hymns, as well as of those bacchanalian and amatory lyrics which are commonly associated with his name. Two short hymns to Artemis and Dionysus, consisting of eight and eleven lines respectively, stand first amongst his few undisputed remains, as printed by recent editors. But pagan hymns, especially when addressed to such deities as Aphrodite, Eros and Dionysus, are not so very unlike what we call "Anacreontic" poetry as to make the contrast of style as great as the word might seem to imply. The tone of Anacreon's lyric effusions has probably led to an unjust estimate, by both ancients and moderns, of the poet's personal character. The "triple worship" of the Muses, Wine and Love, ascribed to him as his religion in an old Greek epigram (Anthol. iii. 25, 51), may have been as purely professional in the two last cases as in the first, and his private character on such points was probably neither much better nor worse than that of his contemporaries. Athenaeus remarks acutely that he seems at least to have been sober when he wrote; and he himself strongly repudiates, as Horace does, the brutal characteristics of intoxication as fit only for barbarians and Scythians (Fr. 64).
Of the five books of lyrical pieces by Anacreon which the Suda and Athenaeus mention as extant in their time, we have now but the merest fragments, collected from the citations of later writers. Those graceful little poems (most of them first printed from the MSS. by Henry Estienne in 1554), which long passed among the learned for the songs of Anacreon, and which are well-known to many English readers in the translations of Abraham Cowley and Moore, are really of much later date, though possibly here and there genuine fragments of the poet are included.
Modern critics, however, regard the entire collection as imitations belonging to different periods--the oldest probably to Alexandrian times, the most recent to the last days of paganism. They will always retain a certain popularity from their lightness and elegance, and some of them are fair copies of Anacreon's style, which would lend itself readily enough to a clever imitator. A strong argument against their genuineness lies in the fact that the peculiar forms of the Ionic Greek, in which Anacreon wrote, are not to be found in these reputed odes, while the fragments of his poems quoted by ancient writers are full of Ionicisms. Again, only one of the quotations from Anacreon in ancient writers is to be found in these poems, which further contain no references to contemporaries, whereas Strabo (xiv. p. 638) expressly states that Anacreon's poems included numerous allusions to Polycrates. The character of Love as a mischievous little boy is quite different from that given by Anacreon, who describes him as "striking with a mighty axe, like a smith," and is more akin to the conceptions of later literature.
Antimachus, of Colophon or Claros, Greek poet and grammarian, flourished about 400 BC.Scarcely anything is known of his life. His poetical efforts were not generally appreciated, although he received encouragement from his younger contemporary Plato (Plutarch, Lysander, 18).
His chief works were: a long-winded epic Thebais, an account of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes and the war of the Epigoni; and an elegiac poem Lyde, so called from the poet's mistress, for whose death he endeavoured to find consolation by ransacking mythology for stories of unhappy love affairs (Plutarch, Consul, ad Apoll. 9; Athenaeus xiii. 597).
Antimachus was the founder of "learned" epic poetry, and the forerunner of the Alexandrian school, whose critics allotted him the next place to Homer. He also prepared a critical recension of the Homeric poems.
Anyte of Tegea (fl. early 3rd century BC) was an Arcadian poet, admired by her contemporaries and later generations for her charming epigrams and epitaphs. Antipater of Thessalonica listed her as one of the nine earthly muses. At least 18 of her epigrams, written in the Doric dialect, survive in the Greek Anthology; an additional six are doubtfully attributed to her. Even so, we have more complete poems by Anyte than by any other Greek woman, since the nine books of Sappho survive only in fragments.She was the first to write epitaphs for animals, and one of the first known to write vivid descriptions of untamed nature.
Apollodorus of Carystus in Euboea was one of the most important writers of the Attic New Comedy, who flourished in Athens between 300 and 260 B.C. He is to be distinguished from the older Apollodorus of Gela (342 - 290), also a writer of comedy, a contemporary of Menander. He wrote 47 comedies and obtained the prize five times.
Apollonius of Rhodes (Apollonius Rhodius), librarian at Alexandria, was a Greek grammarian and epic poet, who flourished under the Ptolemies Philopator and Epiphanes (222-181 BC). He was the author of Argonautica, a literary epic retelling of ancient material concerning Jason and the Argonauts' quest for the Golden Fleece in the mythic land of Colchis.
Born at Alexandria, perhaps about 270 BC, Apollonius was a pupil of Callimachus, with whom he subsequently quarrelled. Callimachus' "Hymn to Apollo", closes with some lines that allude to Apollonius, and dates about 248 or 247 BC, which would put Apollonius' birth about twenty years earlier.
In his youth Apollonius composed the work for which he is known-- Argonautica, an epic in four books on the legend of the Argonauts. The young poet departed from Callimachus's learned and artificial style and aimed instead to recreate a Homeric simplicity. He recited an early version while still scarcely more than a youth, but the poem got a poor reception in Callimachus' learned circle at the Library. The quarrel between the older and younger poet degenerated into a bitter personal feud, commemorated in surviving epigrams.
Disgusted with his failure, Apollonius withdrew to Rhodes. There his labors as a teacher of rhetoric and his newly revised poem won him hearty recognition and even admission to citizenship, whence his surname. Afterwards, returning to Alexandria, he recited his poem once more, this time with universal applause, and he was reconciled with Callimachus, next to whom he was eventually buried.
In 196, Ptolemy Epiphanes appointed Apollonius to succeed Eratosthenes as head of the Alexandrian Library, which office he probably held until his death.
As to the Argonautica, Longinus' (De Sublim. p. 54, 19) and Quintilian's (Instit, x. 1, 54) verdict of mediocrity seems hardly deserved; although it lacks the naturalness of Homer, it possesses a certain simplicity and contains some beautiful passages. There is a valuable collection of scholia. The work, highly esteemed by the Romans, was imitated by Virgil (Aeneid, iv.), Varro Atacinus, and Valerius Flaccus. Marianus (about A.D. 500) paraphrased it in iambic trimeters. Apollonius also wrote epigrams; grammatical and critical works; and the foundations of cities.
The scanty biographical information on Apollonius comes from two brief "lives" in the Scholia.The adventure of the Argonauts had been told often before in verse and prose. Only notes of the authors' names survive; their works have perished. The one well-known earlier surviving account is in Pindar's fourth Pythian ode, which provided Apollonius with some details. Epic unity escaped Apollonius, and his epic in four books resolves into a string of well-told episodes, the most memorable being the love story of Jason and Medea in Book III.
His father, Telesicles, who was of noble family, had conducted a colony to Thasos, in obedience to the command of the Delphic oracle. To this island Archilochus himself, hard pressed by poverty, afterwards removed. Another reason for leaving his native place was personal disappointment and indignation at the treatment he had received from Lycambes, a citizen of Paros, who had promised him his daughter Neobule in marriage, but had afterwards withdrawn his consent. Archilochus, taking advantage of the licence allowed at the feasts of Demeter, poured out his wounded feelings in unmerciful satire. He accused Lycambes of perjury, and recited such verses against his daughters, that Lycambes and his daughters are said to have hanged themselves.
Along with the epics of Homer and Hesiod, the satires of Archilochus were one of the mainstays of itinerant rhapsodes, who made a living declaiming poetry at both religious festivals and private homes.
In the historical and poetic imagination, Archilochus represents the romantic intersection of the fighting and the poetic spirits; this dual aspect of his personality is captured with brevity in the following poetic fragment, wherein he describes himself as both a warrior and a poet (something akin to what might modernly be described as a "lover and a fighter").
According to him, Thasos was the meeting-place of the calamities of all Hellas. The inhabitants were frequently involved in quarrels with their neighbours, and in a war against the Saians--a Thracian tribe--he threw away his shield and fled from the field of battle. He does not seem to have felt the disgrace very keenly, for, like Alcaeus, he commemorates the event in a fragment in which he congratulates himself on having saved his life, and says he can easily procure another shield.
After leaving Thasos, he is said to have visited Sparta, but to have been at once banished from that city on account of his cowardice and the licentious character of his works (Valerius Maximus vi. 3, externa 1). He next visited Magna Graecia, Hellenic southern Italy, of which he speaks very favourably. He then returned to his native place, and was slain in a battle against the Naxians by one Calondas or Corax, who was cursed by the oracle for having slain a servant of the Muses.
The writings of Archilochus consisted of elegies, hymns-- one of which used to be sung by the victors in the Olympic games-- and of poems in the iambic and trochaic measures. Greek rhetors credited him with the invention of iambic poetry and its application to satire. The only previous measures in Greek poetry had been the epic hexameter, and its offshoot the elegiac metre; but the slow measured structure of hexameter verse was utterly unsuited to express the quick, light motions of satire.
Archilochus made use of the iambus and the trochee, and organized them into the two forms of metre known as the iambic trimeter and the trochaic tetrameter. The trochaic metre he generally used for subjects of a vicarious nature; the iambic for satires. He was also the first to make use of the arrangement of verses called the epode. Horace in his metres to a great extent follows Archilochus. All ancient authorities unite in praising the poems of Archilochus, in terms which appear exaggerated. His verses seem certainly to have possessed strength, flexibility, nervous vigour, and, beyond everything else, impetuous vehemence and energy: Horace speaks of the "rage" of Archilochus, and Hadrian calls his verses "raging iambics." By his countrymen he was reverenced as the equal of Homer, and statues of these two poets were dedicated on the same day. His poems were written in the old Ionic dialect.
Arion was a legendary poet and citharode in ancient Greece (originally of Lesbos) who lived in the court of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, Greece. He attended a musical competition in Sicily, which he won. On his return trip from Sicily, the avaricious sailors plotted to kill Arion and steal the rich prizes he carried homewards. Arion was given the choice of "suicide" with a proper burial on land, or being thrown in the sea to perish. Neither prospect appealed to Arion and he asked for permission to sing a last song to win time.
Playing his chitara, Arion sung a praise to Apollo, the god of poetry, and his song attracted a number of dolphins around the ship. At the end of the song Arion threw himself in the sea rather than be killed, but one of the dolphins saved his life and carried him to safety at Cape Taenarum.
Arion then continued to Corinth by other means and arrived before the sailors that tried to kill him. On his return to Corinth, the king didn't quite believe Arion's fantastic story. The sailors believed Arion was dead in the sea, and on arrival in Corinth they told the king that Arion had decided to remain in Italy. The king then understood that Arion's story was true and punished the sailors with death. Herodotus I, 23-24Other variations of the story exist. In 1994 it was adapted by Vikram Seth and Alec Roth into an opera, "Arion and the Dolphin", commissioned by English National Opera for professional performers with community chorus and children's chorus.
Arion was credited with the invention of the dithyramb. The Arion fable inspired the central sculptural group in the main water basin of the formal gardens of Schloss Schwetzingen, Germany.
Aristeas was a semi-legendary Greek poet and miracle-worker, a native of Proconnesus in Asia Minor, active ca. 7th century BC. Herodotus reports that Aristeas appeared to drop down dead in a shop, but before his relatives could collect the body, he had left on a seven-year long trip.
Aristeas was supposed to have authored a poem called the Arimaspea, giving an account of travels in the far North. There he encountered a tribe called the Issedonians, who told him of still more fantastic and northerly peoples: the one-eyed Arimaspi who battle gold-guarding gryphons, and the Hyperboreans among whom Apollo lives during the winter.
Three hundred and forty years after his death, Aristeas appeared in Metapontum in Southern Italy to command that a statue of himself be set up and a new altar dedicated to Apollo, saying that since his death he had been travelling with Apollo in the form of a sacred raven. This story appears to be referred to in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics: Aristaeus was a man who lived around 700 BC, and became by transformation, the first raven to act as advisor to Dream.
Bacchylides, Ancient Greek lyric poet, was born at Iulis, in the island of Ceos. His fatheršs name was probably Meidon; his mother was a sister of Simonides, himself a native of Iulis. Eusebius says that Bacchylides "flourished" in 467 BC. As the term used by him refers to the physical prime, and was commonly placed at about the fortieth year, we may suppose that Bacchylides was born circa 507 BC.
Among his Odes the earliest that can be approximately dated to 481 or 479 BC; the latest date is fixed by the recently found fragment of the Olympic register to 452 BC. He would thus have been some forty-nine years younger than his uncle Simonides, and some fifteen years younger than Pindar. Elsewhere Eusebius states that Bacchylides "was of repute" in 431 BC; and George Syncellus, using the same phrase, 428 to 425 BC. This phrase would mean that he was then in the fullness of years and of fame. There is nothing improbable in the supposition that he survived the beginning of the Peloponnesian War.
Bacchylides, like Simonides and Pindar, visited the court of Hiero I of Syracuse (478-467). In his fifth Ode (476 BC), the word Efeos (v. II) has been taken to mean that he had already been the guest of the prince; and, as Simonides went to Sicily in or about 477 BC, that is not unlikely. Ode iii. (468 BC) was possibly written at Syracuse, as verses 15 and 16 suggest. He there pays a high compliment to Hierošs taste in poetry (ver. 3 ff.). A scholium on Pyth. ii. 90 (166) avers that Hiero preferred the Odes of Bacchylides to those of Pindar. The Alexandrian scholars interpreted a number of passages in Pindar as hostile allusions to Bacchylides or Simonides.
The scholiasts are right, it would appear that Pindar regarded the younger of the two Cean poets as a jealous rival, who disparaged him to their common patron, and as one whose poetical skill was due to study rather than to genius. It is tolerably certain that the three poets were visitors at herošs court at about the same time: Pindar and Bacchylides wrote odes of the same kind in his honour; and there was a tradition that he preferred the younger poet. There is thus no intrinsic improbability in the hypothesis that Pindar's haughty spirit had suffered, or imagined, some mortification. It is noteworthy that, whereas in 476 and 470 both he and Bacchylides celebrated Hiero's victories, in 468 (the most important occasion of all) Bacchylides alone was commissioned to do so; although in that year Pindar composed an ode (Olymp. vi.) for another Syracusan victor at the same festival. But, whatever may have been the true bearing of Pindaršs occasional innuendoes, it is at any rate pleasant to find that in the extant work of Bacchylides there is not the faintest semblance of hostile allusion to any rival.
Plutarch (de Exilio, p. 605 c) names Bacchylides in a list of writers, who after they had been banished from their native cities, were active and successful in literature. It was Peloponnesus that afforded a new home to the exiled poet. The passage gives no clue to date or circumstance; but it implies that Peloponnesus was the region where the poet's genius ripened and where he did the work which established his fame. This points to a residence of considerable length; and it may be noted that some of the poems illustrate their author's intimate knowledge of Peloponnesus.
The Alexandrian scholars, who drew up select lists of the best writers in each kind, included Bacchylides in their "canon" of the nine lyric poets, along with Alcman, Sappho, Alcaeus, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides and Pindar. The Alexandrian grammarian Didymus (circa 30 BC) wrote a commentary on the epinikian odes of Bacchylides. Horace, a poet in some respects of kindred genius, was a student of his works, and imitated him (according to Porphyrion) in Odes, i. 15, where Nereus predicts the destruction. of Troy. Quotations from Bacchylides, or references to him, occur in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Strabo, Plutarch, Stobaeus, Athenaeus, Aulus Gellius, Zenobius, Hephaestion, Clement of Alexandria, and various grammarians or scholiasts. Ammianus Marcellinus (xxv. 4) says that the emperor Julian enjoyed reading Bacchylides. It is clear that this poet continued to be popular during at least the first four centuries of our era. No inference adverse to his repute can fairly be drawn from the fact that no mention of him occurs in the extant work of any Attic writer.
The first and most general quality of style in Bacchylides is his perfect simplicity and clearness. Where the text is not corrupt, there are few sentences which are not lucid in meaning and simple in structure. This lucidity is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he seldom attempts imagery of the bolder kind, and never has thoughts of a subtle or complex order. Yet it would be very unjust to regard such clearness as merely a compensatory merit of lyric mediocrity, or to ignore its intimate connection with the man's native grace of mind, with the artist's feeling for expression, with the poet's delicate skill. How many readers, who could enjoy and appreciate Pindar if he were less difficult, are stopped on the threshold by the aspect of his style, and are fain to save their self-esteem by concluding that he is at once turgid and shallow!
A pellucid style must always have been a source of wide, though modest, popularity for Bacchylides. If it be true that Hiero preferred him to Pindar, and that he was a favourite with Julian, those instances suggest the charm which he must always have had for cultivated readers to whom affairs did not leave much leisure for study, and who rejoiced in a poet with whom they could live on such easy terms.
Another prominent trait in the style of Bacchylides is his love of picturesque detail. This characteristic marks the fragment by which, before the discovery of 1896, he was best known - a passage, from one of his paeans, on the blessings of peace (fr. 13, Bergk, 3, Jebb); and it frequently appears in the Odes, especially in the mythical narratives. Greater poets can make an image flash upon the mind, as Pindar sometimes does, by a magic phrase, or by throwing one or two salient points into strong relief. The method of Bacchylides is usually quieter; he paints cabinet pictures. Observation and elegance do more for him than grasp or piercing insight; yet his work is often of very high excellence in its own kind.
His treatment of simile is only a special phase of this general tendency. It is exemplified by the touches with which he elaborates the simile of the eagle in Ode v., and that of the storm-tossed mariners in Ode xii. This full development of simile is Homeric in manner, but not Homeric in motive: Homeršs aim is vividness; Bacchylides is rather intent on. the decorative value of the details themselves. There are occasional flashes of brilliancy in. his imagery, when it is lit up by his keen sense of beauty or splendour in external nature. A radiance, "as of fire," streams from the forms of the Nereids (xvi. 103 if.).
An athlete shines out among his fellows Likeš the bright moon of the mid-month night among the stars (viii. 27 if.). The sudden gleam of hope which comes to the Trojans by the withdrawal of Achilles is like a ray of sunshine "from beneath the edge of a storm-cloud" (xii - 105 if.). The shades of the departed, as seen by Heracles on the banks of the Cocytus, are compared to the countless leaves fluttering in the wind on "the gleaming headlands of Ida" (v. 65 if )--an image not unworthy of Dante or of Milton.Among the minor features of this poet's style the most remarkable is his use of epithets.
A god or goddess nearly always receives some ornamental epithet; sometimes, indeed, two or even three. Such a trait is in unison with the epic manner, the straightforward narrative, which we find in some of the larger poems. On the other hand, the copious use of such ornament has the disadvantage that it fometimes gives a tinge of conventionality to his work. This impression is somewhat strengthened by the fact that many of the epithets are long compound words, not found elsewhere and (in some cases at least) probably invented by the poet; words which suggest a deliberate effort to vary the stock repertory.
The poems contained in the works of Bacchylides found (see below) in 1896 are of two classes:
2. Dithyrambs
The Ode of Victory was properly a song in praise of a deity. Stesichorus (c. 610 BC) seems to have been the first who composed hymns in honour, not of gods, but of heroes; the next step was to write hymns in celebration of victories by living men. This custom arose in the second half of the 6th century BC, the age in which the games at the four great Greek festivals reached the fulness of their popularity. Simonides (c. 556 BC) was the earliest recorded writer of epinikia. His odes of this class are now represented only by a few very small fragments, some twenty lines in all. Two of these fragments, belonging to the description of a chariot-race, warrant the belief that Simonides, in his epinikia, differed from Pindar in dwelling more on the incidents 01 the particular victory. The same characteristic is found in the epinikia of Bacchylides. His fifth ode, and Pindaršs first Olympian, alike celebrate the victory of the horse Pherenicus; but, while Pindar's reference to the race itself is slight and general (vv. 20-22), Bacchylides describes the running of the winner much more vividly and fully (vv. 37-49).
The manuscript contains fourteen epinikia, or thirteen if Blass be right in supposing that Odes vi. and vii., as numbered by Kenyon in the editio princeps, are parts of a single ode (for Lachon of Ceos). Four (or on the view just stated, three) of the odes relate to the Olympian festival; two to the Pythian; three to the Isthmian; three to the Nemean; and one to a Thessalian festival. This comes last.
The order in which the manuscript arranges the other epinikia seems to be casual; at least it does not follow:
2. chronological sequence;
3. classification by contests; nor
4. classification by festivalsšexcept that the four great festivals precede the Petra-ea.
The first ode, celebrating a victory of the Cean Argeios at the Isthmus, may possibly have been placed there for a biographical reason, such as because the poet treated in it the early legends of his native island.
A mythical narrative, connected in some way with the victor or his city, usually occupies the central part of the Pindaric ode. It serves to lift the poem into an ideal region, and to invest it with more than a local or temporary significance. The method of Bacchylides in this department of the epinikion is best illustrated by the myth of Croesus in Ode iii., that of Heracles and Meleager in Ode v., and that of the Proetides in Ode x. Pindar's habit is to select certain moments or scenes of a legend, which he depicts with great force and vividness. Bacchylides, on the other hand, has a gentle flow of simple epic narrative; he relies on the interest of the story as a whole, rather than on his power of presenting situations. Another element, always present in the longer odes of victory, is that which may be called the "gnomic." Here, again, there is a contrast between the two poets. Pindar packs his maxims into terse and sometimes obscure epigrams; he utters them in a didactic tone, as of one who can speak with the commanding voice of Delphic wisdom. The moralizing of Bacchylides is rather an utterance of quiet meditation, sometimes recalling the strain of lonian gnomic elegy.
The epinikia of Bacchylides are followed in the manuscript by six compositions which the Alexandrians classed under the general name of Dithyrambs. The "dithyramb," first mentioned by Archilochus (c. 670 BC), received a finished and choral form from Anon of Lesbos (c. 600 BC). His dithyrambs, produced at Corinth, belonged to the cult of Dionysus, and the members of his chorus personated satyrs. Originally concerned with the birth of the god, the dithyramb came to deal with all his fortunes: then its scope became still larger; it might celebrate, not Dionysus alone, but any god or hero.
Several other classes of composition are represented by those fragments of Bacchylides, preserved in ancient literature. Among these we hear of are:
1. hymns of pious farewell, speeding some god on his way at the season when he passed from one haunt to another.
2. fragments on the blessings of peace.
3. choral odes sung during processions to temples.
4. lively dance-songs for religious festivals.
5. five fragments of a class akin to drinking-songs. Under this head come some lively and humorous verses on the power of wine, imitated by Horace (Odes, iii. 21. 13-20).
6. two elegiacs, represented in the Palatine Anthology. The first is an inscription for an offering commemorative of a victory gained by a chorus with a poem written by Bacchylides. The second is an inscription for a shrine dedicated to Zephyrus. Its authenticity has been questioned, but not disproved.
The papyrus containing the odes of Bacchylides was found in Egypt by locals, and reached the British Museum in the autumn of 1896. It was then in about 200 pieces. By the skill and industry of Mr F. G. Kenyon, the editor of the editio princeps (1897), it was reconstructed from these lacerated members. As now arranged, the manuscript consists of three sections.
2. The second section contains columns 23-29. Of these, column 23 is represented only by the last letters of two words. This section comprises what remains of Odes xiii. and xiv. It breaks off before the end of xiv., which is the last of the epjnjkia.
3. The third section comprises columns 30-39. It begins with the mutilated opening verses of Ode xv., the first of the dithyrambs, and breaks off after verse ii of the last dithyramb.
It is impossible to say how much has been lost between the end of column 29 and the beginning of column 30. Probably, however, Ode xiv., if not the last, was nearly the last of the epinikia. It concerns a festival of a merely local character, the Thessalian Herpaia, and was therefore placed after the thirteen other epinikia, which are connected with the four great festivals. The same lacuna leaves it doubtful whether any collective title was prefixed. After the last column (39) of the MS., a good deal has probably been lost. Bacchylides seems to have written at least three other poems of this class (on Cassandra, Laocoon and Philoctetes); and these would have come, in alphabetical order, after the last of the extant six (Idas).
Bion, Greek bucolic poet, was born at Phlossa near Smyrna, and flourished about 100 BC. The account formerly given of him, that he was the contemporary and imitator of Theocritus, the friend and tutor of Moschus, and lived about 280 BC, is now generally regarded as incorrect. W Stein (De Moschi et Bionis aetate, Tübingen, 1893) puts Bion, chiefly on metrical grounds, in the first half of the 1st century BC .Nothing is known of him except that he lived in Sicily. The story that he died of poison, administered to him by some jealous rivals, who afterwards suffered the penalty of their crime, is probably only an invention. Although his poems are included in the general class of bucolic poetry, the remains show little of the vigour and truthfulness to nature characteristic of Theocritus. They breathe an exaggerated sentimentality, and show traces of the overstrained reflection frequently observable in later developments of pastoral poetry. The longest and best of them is the Lament for Adonis. It refers to the first day of the festival of Adonis, on which the death of the favourite of Aphrodite was lamented, thus forming an introduction to the Adoniazusae of Theocritus, the subject of which is the second day, when the reunion of Adonis and Aphrodite was celebrated.
Callimachus (ca. 305 BC- ca. 240 BC) was a Greek poet and grammarian, a native of Cyrene and a descendant of the illustrious house of the Battiadae, whence he was sometimes called Battiades (e.g., in Catullus's 65th poem). He opened a school in the suburbs of Alexandria, and some of the most distinguished grammarians and poets were his pupils, among them Apollonius of Rhodes. He was subsequently appointed by Ptolemy Philadelphus as chief librarian of the Alexandrian library, which office he held till his death (about 240). His Pinakes (tablets), in 120 books, a critical and chronologically arranged catalogue of the library, laid the foundation of a history of Greek literature.
According to the Suda, he wrote about 800 works, in verse and prose; of these only six hymns, sixty-four epigrams and some fragments are extant; a considerable fragment of the Hecale, an idyllic epic, has also been discovered in the Rainer papyri.His Coma Berenices is only known from the celebrated imitation of Catullus (the latter's 66th poem). His Aitia ("Causes") was a collection of elegiac poems in four books, dealing with the foundation of cities, religious ceremonies and other customs. According to Quintilian (Inst it. x.1.58) he was the chief of the elegiac poets; his elegies were highly esteemed by the Romans (see Neoterics), and imitated by Ovid, Catullus and especially Propertius. The extant hymns are extremely learned, and written in a laboured and artificial style. The epigrams, some of the best specimens of their kind, have been incorporated in the Greek Anthology.
Chaeremon was an Athenian dramatist of the first half of the fourth century BCE. He is generally considered a tragic poet. Aristotle (Rhetoric, iil. 12) says his works were intended for reading, not for representation. According to Suidas, he was also a comic poet, and the title of at least one of his plays (Achilles Slayer of Thersites) seems to indicate that it was a satyric drama. His Centaurus (or Centaur) is described by Aristotle (Poet. i. I2) as a rhapsody in all kinds of metres. The fragments of Chaeremon are distinguished by correctness of form and facility of rhythm, but marred by a florid and affected style reminiscent of Agathon. He especially excelled in descriptions (irrelevantly introduced) dealing with such subjects as flowers and female beauty. It is not agreed whether he is the author of three epigrams in the Greek Anthology (Palatine vii. 469, 720, 721) which bear his name. His maxim, "Luck, not wisdom, rules the affairs of men," was adopted by Plutarch as the text of one of his essays.
Choerilus of Iasus was an epic poet of Iasus in Caria, who lived in the 4th century BC. He accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns as court-poet. He is well known from the passages in Horace (Epistles, ii. 1, 232; Ars Poetica, 357), according to which he received a piece of gold for every good verse he wrote in celebration of the glorious deeds of his master. The quality of his verses may be estimated from the remark attributed to Alexander, that he would rather be the Thersites of Homer than the Achilles of Choerilus. The epitaph on Sardanapalus, said to have been translated from the Chaldean (quoted in Athenaeus, viii. p. 336), is generally supposed to be by Choerilus.
Choerilus of Samos was an epic poet of Samos, who flourished at the end of the 5th century BC. After the fall of Athens he settled at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedon, where he was the associate of Agathon, Melanippides, and Plato the comic poet. The only work that can with certainty be attributed to him is the llepo~Ls or llspaucii, a history of the struggle of the Greeks against Persia, the central point of which was the Battle of Salamis. His importance consists in his having taken for his theme national and contemporary events in place of the deeds of old-time heroes. For this new departure he apologizes in the introductory verses (preserved in the scholiast on Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii.14), where he says that the subjects of epic poetry being all exhausted, it was necessary to strike out a new path. The story of his intimacy with Herodotus is probably due to the fact that he imitated him and had recourse to his history for the incidents of his poem. The Perseis was at first highly successful and was said to have been read, together with the Homeric poems, at the Panathenaea, but later critics reversed this favorable judgment. Aristotle (Topica, ~ 1) calls Choerilus' comparisons far-fetched and obscure, and the Alexandrians displaced him by Antimachus in the canon of epic poets. The fragments are artificial in tone.
Christodorus, of Coptos in Egypt, epic poet, flourished during the reign of Anastasius I (491-518). According to Suidas, he was the author of IIIvrpta, accounts of the foundation of various cities; Au&axa, the mythical history of Lydia; Icavpuda, the conquest of Isauria by Anastasius; three books of epigrams; and many other works. In addition to two epigrams (Anthol. Pal. vii. 697, 698) we possess a description of eighty statues of gods, heroes and famous men and women in the gymnasium of Zeuxippus at Constantinople. This Ee paver, consisting of 416 hexameters, forms the second book of the Palatine Anthology. The writer's chief models are Homer and Nonnus, whom he follows closely in the structure of his hexameters. Opinions are divided as to the merits of the work. Some critics regard it as of great importance for the history of art and a model of description; others consider it valueless, alike from the historical, mythological and archaeological points of view.
ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF ALL FILES
