THE MEGARA and THE DEAD ADONIS are two anonymous

Greek poems of the Hellenistic era, perhaps composed in the

C3rd or C2nd BC. The Megara is a Greek bucolic poem in the
style of Theocritus, and sometimes attributed to that poet. The
Dead Adonis is a Greek lyric poem belonging to the
Anacreontea school.
THE MEGARA
This poem gives a picture of Heracles wife and mother at home
in his house at Tiryns while he is abroad about his Labours. The
two women sit weeping. The wife bewails his mad murder of
their children, and gently hints that the mother might give her
more sympathy in her sorrow if she would not be for ever
lamenting her own. To which the kind old Alcmena replies,
sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; but through her own
anxiety for the safety of the labouring Heracles, increased now
by an evil dream, is food enough, God knows, for lamentation,
she feels, as indeed Megara must know full well, for her
sorrowing daughter too. The poem bears a resemblance to
Theocritus XXV, and is thought by some to belong to the same
author.
THE DEAD ADONIS
This piece of Anacreontean verse is shown both by style and
metre to be of late date, and was probably incorporated in the
Bucolic Collection only because of its connexion in subject with
the Lament for Adonis.
*
ARATUS OF SOLI was a Greek poet who flourished in
Macedonia in the early C3rd BC. His only surviving work is the
Phaenomena, a book describing the constellations and weather
signs.
ARATUS INDEX

A. Northern Constellations
B. Southern Constellations
C. The Five Planets
D. Circles of the Celestial Sphere
E. Zodiac Risings
F. The Weather Signs
*
Callimachus (/klmks/; Ancient Greek: ,
Kallimachos; 310/305240 BC) was a native of the Greek
colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar
at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the
EgyptianGreek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy
III Euergetes. Although he was never made chief librarian, he
was responsible for producing a bibliographic survey based
upon the contents of the Library. This, his Pinakes, 120 volumes
long, provided the foundation for later work on the history of
Greek literature. As one of the earliest critic-poets, he typifies
Hellenistic scholarship.
Family and early life
Callimachus was of Libyan Greek origin. He was born and
raised in Cyrene, as member of a distinguished family, his
parents being Mesatme (or Mesatma) and Battus, supposed
descendant of the first Greek king of Cyrene, Battus I, through
whom Callimachus claimed to be a descendant of the Battiad
dynasty, the Libyan Greek monarchs that ruled Cyrenaica for
eight generations and the first Greek Royal family to have
reigned in Africa. He was named after his grandfather, an
"elder" Callimachus, who was highly regarded by the Cyrenaean
citizens and had served as a general.
Callimachus married the daughter of a Greek man called
Euphrates who came from Syracuse. However, it is unknown if
they had children. He also had a sister called Megatime but very
little is known about her: she married a Cyrenaean man called
Stasenorus or Stasenor to whom she bore a son, Callimachus (so

called "the Younger" as to distinguish him from his maternal

uncle), who also became a poet, author of "The Island".
In later years, he was educated in Athens. When he returned to
North Africa, he moved to Alexandria.
Works
Elitist and erudite, claiming to "abhor all common things,"
Callimachus is best known for his short poems and epigrams.
During the Hellenistic period, a major trend in Greek-language
poetry was to reject epics modelled after Homer. Instead,
Callimachus urged poets to "drive their wagons on untrodden
fields," rather than following in the well worn tracks of Homer,
idealizing a form of poetry that was brief, yet carefully formed
and worded, a style at which he excelled. In the prologue to his
Aetia, he claims that Apollo visited him and admonished him to
"fatten his flocks, but to keep his muse slender," a clear
indication of his choice of carefully crafted and allusive
material. "Big book, big evil" ( , mega
biblion, mega kakon) is another of his verses, attacking long,
old-fashioned poetry using the very style Callimachus proposed
to replace it. Callimachus also wrote poems in praise of his
royal patron and a wide variety of other poetic styles, as well as
prose and criticism.
Due to Callimachus' strong stance against the epic, he and his
younger student Apollonius of Rhodes, who favored epic and
wrote the Argonautica, had a long and bitter feud, trading
barbed comments, insults, and ad hominem attacks for over
thirty years. It is now known, through a papyrus fragment from
Oxyrhynchus listing the earliest chief librarians of the Library of
Alexandria that Ptolemy II never offered the post to
Callimachus, but passed him over for Apollonius Rhodius.
Some classicists, including Peter Green, speculate that this
contributed to the poets' long feud.
Though Callimachus was an opponent of "big books", the Suda
puts his number of works at (a possibly exaggerated) 800,
suggesting that he found large quantities of small works more

acceptable. Of these, only six hymns, sixty-four epigrams, and

some fragments are extant; a considerable fragment of the
Hecale, one of Callimachus' few longer poems treating epic
material, has also been discovered in the Rainer papyri. His
Aetia ("Causes"), another rare longer work surviving only in
tattered papyrus fragments and quotations in later authors, was a
collection of elegiac poems in four books, dealing with the
foundation of cities, obscure religious ceremonies, unique local
traditions apparently chosen for their oddity, and other customs,
throughout the Hellenic world In the first three books at least,
the formula appears to ask a question of the Muse, of the form,
"Why, on Paros, do worshippers of the Charites use neither
flutes nor crowns?" "Why, at Argos is a month named for
'lambs'?" "Why, at Leucas, does the image of Artemis have a
mortar on its head?" A series of questions can be reconstituted
from the fragments. One passage of the Aetia, the so-called
Coma Berenices, has been reconstructed from papyrus remains
and the celebrated Latin adaptation of Catullus (Catullus 66).
The extant hymns are extremely learned, and written in a style
that some have criticised as labored and artificial. The epigrams
are more widely respected, and several have been incorporated
into the Greek Anthology.
According to Quintilian (10.1.58) 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
Sextus Propertius. Many modern classicists hold Callimachus in
high regard for his major influence on Latin poetry.
Callimachus' most famous prose work is the Pinakes (Lists), a
bibliographical survey of authors of the works held in the
Library of Alexandria. The Pinakes was one of the first known
documents that lists, identifies, and categorizes a librarys
holdings. By consulting the Pinakes, a library patron could find
out if the library contained a work by a particular author, how it
was categorized, and where it might be found. It is important to
note that Callimachus did not seem to have any models for his
pinakes, and invented this system on his own.

*
Bacchylides (/bkldiz/; Ancient Greek: ) (5th
century BC) was a Greek lyric poet. Later Greeks included him
in the canonical list of nine lyric poets which included his uncle
Simonides. The elegance and polished style of his lyrics have
been noted in Bacchylidean scholarship since at least Longinus
(De Sublimitate 33,5). Some scholars, however, have
characterized these qualities as superficial charm. He has often
been compared unfavourably with his contemporary, Pindar, as
"a kind of Boccherini to Pindar's Haydn", yet the differences in
their styles doesn't allow for easy comparison and "to blame
Bacchylides for not being Pindar is as childish a judgement as to
condemn...Marvel for missing the grandeur of Milton." His
career coincided with the ascendency of dramatic styles of
poetry, as embodied in the works of Aeschylus or Sophocles,
and he is in fact one of the last poets of major significance
within the more ancient tradition of purely lyric poetry. The
most notable features of his lyrics are their clarity in expression
and simplicity of thought, making them an ideal introduction to
the study of Greek lyric poetry in general and to Pindar's verse
in particular.
The life of Bacchylides
One canon is there, one sure way of happiness for mortals if
one can keep a cheerful spirit throughout life.
This precept, from one of Bacchylides' extant fragments, was
considered by his modern editor, Richard Claverhouse Jebb, to
be typical of the poet's temperament: "If the utterances scattered
throughout the poems warrant a conjecture, Bacchylides was of
placid temper; amiably tolerant; satisfied with a modest lot; not
free from some tinge of that pensive melancholy which was
peculiarly Ionian; but with good sense..."
Bacchylides' lyrics do not seem to have been popular in his own
lifetime. Lyrics by his uncle, Simonides, and his rival, Pindar,
were known in Athens and were sung at parties, they were
parodied by Aristophanes and quoted by Plato, but no trace of

Bacchylides' work can be found until the Hellenistic age, when

Callimachus began writing some commentaries on them. Like
Simonides and Pindar, however, Bacchylides composed lyrics to
appeal to the sophisticated tastes of a social elite and his
patrons, though relatively few in number, covered a wide,
geographical area around the Mediterranean, including for
example Delos in The Aegean Sea, Thessaly to the north of
mainland Greece and Sicily or Magna Graecia in the west. It has
been inferred from the elegance and quiet charm of his lyrics
that he only gradually acquired fame towards the end of his life.
Being drawn from sources compiled long after his death, the
details of Bacchylides's life are sketchy and sometimes
contradictory. According to Strabo, he was born in Ioulis, on the
island of Ceos, and his mother was the sister of Simonides.
According to Suda, his father's name was Meidon and his
grandfather, also named Bacchylides, was a famous athlete, yet
according to Etymologicum Magnum his father's name was
Meidylus. There is an ancient tradition, upheld for example by
Eustathius and Thomas Magister, that he was younger than
Pindar and some modern scholars have endorsed it, such as
Jebb, who assigns his birth to around 507 BC, whereas Bowra,
for example, opted for a much earlier date, around 5241 BC.
Most modern scholars however treat Bacchylides as an exact
contemporary of Pindar, placing his birth around 518 BC.
According to one account, Bacchylides was banished for a time
from his native Ceos and spent this period as an exile in
Peloponnesus, where his genius ripened and he did the work
which established his fame. Plutarch is the only ancient source
for this account and yet it is considered credible on the basis of
some literary evidence (Pindar wrote a paean celebrating Ceos,
in which he says on behalf of the island "I am renowned for my
athletic achievements among Greeks" [Paean 4, epode 1], a
circumstance that suggests that Bacchylides himself was
unavailable at the time.) Observations by Eusebius and Georgius
Syncellus can be taken to indicate that Bacchylides might have
been still alive at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, but
modern scholars have differed widely in estimates of the year of
his death Jebb, for example sets it at 428 BC and yet a date
around 451 BC is more favoured.

Ceos, where Bacchylides was born and raised, had long had a
history of poetical and musical culture, especially in its
association with Delos, the focal point of the Cyclades and the
principal sanctuary of the Ionian race, where the people of Ceos
annually sent choirs to celebrate festivals of Apollo. There was a
thriving cult of Apollo on Ceos too, including a temple at
Carthaea, a training ground for choruses where, according to
Athenaeus, Bacchylides's uncle, Simonides, had been a teacher
in his early years. Ceans had a strong sense of their national
identity, characterized by their own exotic legends, national
folklore and a successful tradition of athletic competition,
especially in running and boxing making the island a
congenial home for a boy of quick imagination. Athletic
victories achieved by Ceans in panhellenic festivals were
recorded at Ioulis on slabs of stone and thus Bacchylides could
readily announce, in an ode celebrating one such victory (Ode
2), a total of twenty-seven victories won by his countrymen at
the Isthmian Games. Ceans had participated in the defeat of the
Persians at the Battle of Salamis and they could take pride in the
fact that an elegy composed by Bacchylides's uncle was chosen
by Athens to commemorate the Athenians who fell at the Battle
of Marathon. Being only thirteen miles from the Athenian cape
Sunium, Ceos was in fact necessarily responsive to Athenian
influences.
Bacchylides's career as a poet probably benefitted from the high
reputation of his uncle, Simonides, whose patrons, when
Bacchylides was born, already included Hipparchus (son of
Peisistratos), brother of Hippias the tyrant of Athens (52714
BC) and cultural coordinator of the city at that time. Simonides
later introduced his nephew to ruling families in Thessaly and to
the Sicilian tyrant, Hieron of Syracuse, whose glittering court
attracted artists of the calibre of Pindar and Aeschylus.
Bacchylides's first notable success came sometime after 500 BC
with commissions from Athens for the great Delian festival
(Ode 17) and from Macedonia for a song to be sung at a
symposium for the young prince, Alexander I (fr. 20B). Soon he
was competing with Pindar for commissions from the leading
families of Aegina and, in 476 BC, their rivalry seems to have

reached the highest levels when Bacchylides composed an ode

celebrating Hieron's first victory at the Olympian Games (Ode
5). Pindar celebrated the same victory but used the occasion to
advise the tyrant of the need for moderation in one's personal
conduct (Pindar's Olympian Ode 1), whereas Bacchylides
probably offered his own ode as a free sample of his skill in the
hope of attracting future commissions. Bacchylides was
commissioned by Hieron in 470 BC, this time to celebrate his
triumph in the chariot race at the Pythian Games (Ode 4). Pindar
also composed a celebratory ode for this victory (Pindar's
Pythian Ode 1), including however stern, moral advice for the
tyrant to rule wisely. Pindar was not commissioned to celebrate
Hieron's subsequent victory in the chariot race at the Olympic
Games in 468 BC this, the most prestigious of Hieron's
victories, was however celebrated by Bacchylides (Ode 3). The
tyrant's apparent preference for Bacchylides over Pindar on this
occasion might have been partly due to the Cean poet's simpler
language and not just to his less moralizing posture and yet it is
also possible that Bacchylides and his uncle were simply better
suited to palace politics than was their more high-minded rival.
Alexandrian scholars in fact interpreted a number of passages in
Pindar as hostile allusions to Bacchylides and Simonides and
this interpretation has been endorsed by modern scholars also.
As a composer of choral lyrics, Bacchylides was probably
responsible also for the performance, involving him in frequent
travel to venues where musicians and choirs awaited instruction.
Ancient authorities testify to his visit to the court of Hieron
(478467) and this is indeed indicated by his fifth Ode (476
BC), where the word xenos (V.11) implies that he had already
been Hieron's guest, (probably accompanied by his uncle).
Verses 15 and 16 of his third ode (468 BC), also for Hieron,
indicate that he might have composed that work at Syracuse.
Bacchylides's poetry how it survived
The poems were collected into critical editions sometime in the
late 3rd century BC by the Alexandrian scholar, Aristophanes of
Byzantium, who probably restored them to their appropriate
metres after finding them written in prose form. They were

arranged in nine 'books', exemplifying the following genre

(Bacchylides in fact composed in a greater variety of genres
than any of the other lyric poets who comprise the canonic nine,
with the exception of Pindar, who composed in ten):
dithyrambs
paeans
hymns
prosodia
partheneia
hyporchemata
epinikians
erotica
encomia
The Alexandrian grammarian Didymus (circa 30 BC) wrote
commentaries on the work of Bacchylides and the poems
appear, from the finding of papyri fragments, to have been
popular reading in the first three centuries AD. Their popularity
seems to have continued into the 4th century also: Ammianus
Marcellinus (xxv. 4) observed that the emperor Julian enjoyed
reading Bacchylides, and the largest collection of quotations that
survived up until the modern era was assembled by Stobaeus
(early 5th century). All that remained of Bacchylides's poetry by
1896, however, were sixty-nine fragments, totalling 107 lines.
The oldest sources on Bacchylides and his work are scholia on
Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aristophanes, Apollonius Rhodius and
Callimachus. Other fragments and 'notices' are sprinkled
through the surviving works of ancient authors, which they used
to illustrate various points they were making, as for example:
Dionysius of Halicarnassus frag. 11
Strabo notice 57
Plutarch frag. 29
Apollonius Dyscolus frag. 31
Zenobius frag.s 5, 24
Hephaestion frag.s 12, 13, 15
Athenaeus frag.s 13, 16, 17, 18, 22
Clement of Alexandria frag.s 19, 20, 21, 32
Stobaeus frag.s 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20, 28

Priscian frag. 27
Johannes Siceliota frag. 26
Etymologicum Magnum frag.s 25, 30
Palatine Anthology frag.s 33, 34.
Fortunately for Bacchylidean scholarship, a papyrus came to
light in Egypt at the end of the 19th century with a text of Greek
uncials, which a local claimed to have found in a ransacked
tomb, between the feet of a mummy. It was snapped up for a
"preposterous" price by the great Egyptologist Wallis Budge, of
the British Museum. Budge's plan to return to the museum with
the papyrus was unacceptable to the British Consul and to the
Egyptian Service of Antiquities so he resorted to desperate
measures. In an elaborate plan involving a crate of oranges,
switched trains and covert embarcations, he eventually sailed
from the Suez with the papyrus dismembered and disguised as a
packet of photographs. He presented his find in 1896 to Frederic
Kenyon in the British Museum's Department of Manuscripts.
Kenyon reassembled 1382 lines, of which 1070 were perfect or
easily restored and, the following year, he published an edition
of twenty poems, six of them nearly complete. Some more
pieces of the Egyptian fragments were fitted together by
Friedrich Blass in Germany and then followed the authoritative
edition of Bacchylides' poetry by Richard Claverhouse Jebb a
combination of scholars that inspired one academic to comment:
"we almost had the Renaissance back again".
Bacchylides had become, almost overnight, among the best
represented poets of the canonic nine, with about half as many
extant verses as Pindar, adding about a hundred new words to
Greek lexicons. Ironically, his newly discovered poems sparked
a renewed interest in Pindar's work, with whom he was
compared so unfavourably that "the students of Pindaric poetry
almost succeeded in burying Bacchylides all over again.
Bacchylides's poetic style: the Cean nightingale
Together with true glories, men will praise also the charm of
the melodious Cean nightingale. Bacchylides, Ode 3

Much of Bacchylides's poetry was commissioned by proud and

ambitious aristocrats, a dominant force in Greek political and
cultural life in the 6th and early part of the 5th centuries, yet
such patrons were gradually losing influence in an increasingly
democratic Greek world. The kind of lofty and stately poetry
that celebrated the achievements of these archaic aristocrats was
within the reach of 'The Cean nightingale', yet he seems to have
been more at home in verses of a humbler and lighter strain,
even venturing on folksiness and humour.
The distinctive merits of Bacchylides, his transparent clearness,
his gift of narrative, his felicity in detail, the easy flow of his
elegant verse, rather fitted him to become a favourite with
readers... he was a poet who gave pleasure without demanding
effort, a poet with whom the reader could at once feel at home.
Richard Claverhouse Jebb
Lyric poetry was still a vigorous art-form and its genres were
already fully developed when Bacchylides started out on his
career. From the time of the Peloponnesian War, around the end
of his life, the art-form was in decline, as exemplified by the
inferior dithyrambs of Philoxenos of Cythera. Meanwhile
tragedy, as developed by Athenian dramatists of the calibre of
Aeschylus and Sophocles, had begun to emerge as the leading
poetic genre, borrowing the literary dialect, the metres and
poetic devices of lyric poetry in general and the dithyramb in
particular (Aristotle Poetics IV 1449a). The debt however was
mutual and Bacchylides borrowed from tragedy for some of his
effects thus Ode 16, with its myth of Deianeira, seems to
assume audience knowledge of Sophocles's play, Women of
Trachis, and Ode 18 echoes three plays Aeschylus's Persians
and Suppliants and Sophocles's Oedipus Rex. His vocabulary
shows the influence of Aeschylus with several words being
common to both poets and found nowhere else. The use of
gripping and exciting narrative and the immediacy gained from
the frequent use of direct speech are thought to be among
Bacchylides's best qualities influencing later poets such as
Horace (who imitated him, according to Pomponius Porphyrion,
in Carmen I. 15, where Nereus predicts the destruction of Troy).
These narrative qualities were modelled largely on the work of

Stesichorus, whose lyrical treatment of heroic myth influenced,

for instance, Ode 5. Whereas however Stesichorus developed
graphic images in his poetry that subsequently became
established in vase painting, Bacchylides merely employed
images already current in his own day.
Simonides, the uncle of Bacchylides, was another strong
influence on his poetry, as for example in his metrical range,
mostly dactylo-epitrite in form, with some Aeolic rhythms and a
few iambics. The surviving poems in fact are not metrically
difficult, with the exception of two odes (Odes XV and XVI,
Jebb). He shared Simonides's approach to vocabulary,
employing a very mild form of the traditional, literary Doric
dialect, with some Aeolic words and some traditional epithets
borrowed from epic. Like Simonides, he followed the lyric
tradition of coining compound adjectives a tradition in which
the poet was expected to be both innovative and tasteful but
the results are thought by some modern scholars to be uneven.
Many of his epithets however serve a thematic and not just a
decorative function, as for instance in Ode 3, where the "bronzewalled court" and "well-built halls" of Croesus (Ode 3.3031
and 3.46) contrast architecturally with the "wooden house" of
his funeral pyre (Ode 3.49), in an effect that aims at pathos and
which underscores the moral of the ode.
Bacchylides is renowned for his use of picturesque detail, giving
life and colour to descriptions with small but skilful touches,
often demonstrating a keen sense of beauty or splendour in
external nature: a radiance, "as of fire," streams from the forms
of the Nereids (XVI. 103 if. Jebb); an athlete shines out among
his fellows like "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, resemble countless leaves fluttering in the wind
on "the gleaming headlands of Ida" (V. 65 if ). Imagery is
employed sparingly but often with impressive and beautiful
results, such as in the simile of the eagle in Ode 5 below.

Ode 5
Bacchylides has often been compared unflatteringly with Pindar,
as for example by the French critic, Henri Weil: "There is no
doubt that he fails of the elevation, and also of the depth, of
Pindar. The soaring wing was refused him, and he should never
have compared himself, as he does somewhere, to an eagle."
The image of the eagle occurs in Ode 5, which was composed
for Hieron of Syracuse in celebration of his Olympic victory
with the race-horse Pherenicus in 476 BC. Pindar's Olympian
Ode 1 celebrates the same race and the two poems allow for
some interesting comparisons. Bacchylides's Ode 5 includes, in
addition to a brief reference to the victory itself, a long mythical
episode on a related theme, and a gnomic or philosophical
reflection elements that occur also in Pindar's ode and that
seem typical of the victory ode genre. Whereas however
Pindar's ode focuses on the myth of Pelops and Tantalus and
demonstrates a stern moral about the need for moderation in
personal conduct (a reflection on Hieron's political excesses),
Bacchylides's ode focuses on the myths of Meleager and
Hercules, demonstrating the moral that nobody is fortunate or
happy in all things (possibly a reflection on Hieron's chronic
illness). This difference in moral posturing was typical of the
two poets, with Bacchylides adopting a quieter, simpler and less
forceful manner than Pindar. Frederic G. Kenyon, who edited
the papyrus poems, took an unsympathetic view of
Bacchylides's treatment of myth in general:
The myths are introduced mechanically, with little attempt to
connect them with the subject of the ode. In some cases they
appear to have no special appropriateness but to be introduced
merely at the poet's pleasure. There is no originality of
structure; the poet's art is shown in craftsmanship rather than
in invention. Frederic G. Kenyon
Bacchylides however might be better understood as an heir to
Stesichorus, being more concerned with story-telling per se,
than as a rival of Pindar. But irrespective of any scruples about
his treatment of myth, Bacchylides is thought to demonstrate in

Ode 5 some of his finest work and the description of the eagle's
flight, near the beginning of the poem, has been called by one
modern scholar "the most impressive passage in his extant
poetry."
...Quickly
cutting the depth of air
on high with tawny wings
the eagle, messenger of Zeus
who thunders in wide lordship,
is bold, relying on his mighty
strength, while other birds
cower, shrill-voiced, in fear.
The great earth's mountain peaks do not hold him back,
nor the tireless sea's
rough-tossing waves, but in
the limitless expanse
he guides his fine sleek plumage
along the West Wind's breezes,
manifest to men's sight.
So now for me too countless paths extend in all directions
by which to praise your [i.e. Hieron's] prowess...
(Ode 5.1633)
Bacchylides's image of the poet as an eagle winging across the
sea was not original Pindar had already used it earlier
(Nemean Odes 5.2021). In fact, in the same year that both
poets celebrated Pherenicus's Olympic victory, Pindar also
composed an ode for Theron of Acragas (Olympian 2), in which
he likens himself to an eagle confronted with chattering ravens
possibly a reference to Bacchylides and his uncle. It is possible
in that case that Bacchylides's image of himself as an eagle in
Ode 5 was a retort to Pindar. Moreover Bacchylides's line "So
now for me too countless paths extend in all directions" has a
close resemblance to lines in one of Pindar's Isthmian Odes
(1.12), "A thousand ways ... open on every side widespread
before me" but, as the date of Pindar's Isthmian Ode is
uncertain, it is not clear in this case who was imitating whom.
According to Kenyon, Pindar's idionsyncratic genius entitles
him to the benefit of a doubt in all such cases: "... if there be

actual imitation at all, it is fairly safe to conclude that it is on the

part of Bacchylides." In fact one modern scholar has observed in
Bacchylides a general tendency towards imitation, sometimes
approaching the level of quotation: in this case, the eagle simile
in Ode 5 may be thought to imitate a passage in the Homeric
Hymn to Demeter (37583), and the countless leaves fluttering
in the wind on "the gleaming headlands of Ida", mentioned later
in the ode, recall a passage in Iliad (6.1469). A tendency to
imitate other poets is not peculiar to Bacchylides, however it
was common in ancient poetry, as for example in a poem by
Alcaeus (fragment 347), which virtually quotes a passage from
Hesiod (Works and Days 5828).
Pindar's Olympian Ode 1 and Bacchylides's Ode 5 differ also in
their description of the race while Pindar's reference to
Pherenicus is slight and general ("...speeding / by Alpheus' bank,
/ His lovely limbs ungoaded on the course...": Olympian I.20
21), Bacchylides describes the running of the winner more
vividly and in rather more detail a difference that is
characteristic of the two poets:1
When Pherenicos with his auburn mane
ran like the wind
beside the eddies of broad Alpheios,
Eos, with her arms all golden, saw his victory,
and so too at most holy Pytho.
Calling the earth to witness, I declare
that never yet has any horse outstripped him
in competition, sprinkling him with dust
as he rushed forward to the goal.
For like the North Wind's blast,
keeping the man who steers him safe,
he hurtles onward, bringing to Hieron,
that generous host, victory with its fresh applause.
(Ode 5.3749)
Ultimately, however, Bacchylides and Pindar share many of the
same goals and techniques the difference is largely one of
temperament:

They share a common repertory of motifs, images, conventions,

diction; and they affirm and celebrate the heroic values of an
ancient aristocracy. Both seek to bridge the gap between the
fleeting present in its glorious display of beauty and energy and
the eternal world of the gods. Pindar however grasps the
contrasts between the extremes of mortality and divinity with
greater intensity than Bacchylides and for this reason seems the
more philosophical and meditative, more concerned with
ultimate questions of life and death, transience and
permanence. Bacchylides prefers to observe the gentler play of
shadow and sadness over the sensuous surface of his brilliant
world. Charles Segal
You, Pindar, holy mouth of the Muses, and you, talkative Siren,
Bacchylides... -anon. in Palatine Anthology
Ode 13
Ode 13 of the Bacchylides is a Nemean ode performed to honor
the athlete Pytheas of Aegina for winning the pancration event
of the Nemean games. Bacchylides begins his ode with the tale
of Heracles fighting the Nemean lion, employing the battle to
explain why pancration tournaments are now held during the
Nemean games. The allusion to Heracles fight with the lion is
also meant to incite why it is that Pytheas fights for the wreaths
of the games: to obtain the undying glory that the heroes of old
now possess for their deeds. Bacchylides then sings the praises
of Pytheas' home, the island Aegina, and how "her fame excites
a dancers praise." Bacchylides continues this dancer allusion in
praise of Aegina, and ends it by listing some famous men who
were born on the island, namely Peleus and Telamon.
Bacchylides then tells of the greatness of these mens sons,
Achilles and Ajax, alluding to a second myth, the tale of Ajax
repelling Hector on the beaches of Troy, keeping the Trojans
from burning the Greek ships. Bacchylides relates how Achilles
inaction spurred the Trojans to false hope, and how their swollen
pride led them to be destroyed at the hands of the men they
thought they had vanquished. The ode plays upon the fact that
those who are listening to Bacchylides have also read the epics
of Homer, and understand the whole story behind this scene that

would speak poorly of Achilles if people did not know the role
he played in the Trojan war. With this tale complete Bacchylides
proclaims once again that the actions he has just told will be
forever remembered thanks to the muses, leading once again
into his praise of Pytheas and his trainer Menander, who shall be
remembered for their great victories in the Pan-Hellenic games,
even if an envious rival slights them.
Ode 15/Dithyramb 1
The Sons of Antenor, or Helen Demanded Back, is the first of
Bacchylidess dithyrambs in the text restored in 1896. The
opening is incomplete, as part of the papyrus was damaged. The
dithyramb treats a moment in myth before the Trojan war, when
Menelaus, Antenor, and Antenors sons go to King Priam to
demand the return of Helen. As is often the case with ancient
Greek literature, Bacchylides plays of the audiences knowledge
of Homer without repeating a scene told by Homer. He instead
describes a scene which is new to the audience, but which is
given context by knowledge of the Iliad and Odyssey. The story
of this embassy was known to Homer, who merely alludes to it
at Iliad 3.205ff., but it was fully related in the cyclic epic poem
Cypria, according to the Chrestomathy of Proclus.
The style also plays off of Homer. Characters are almost always
named with their fathers, i.e. Odysseus, son of Laertes (as
reconstructed). They are also given epithets, though these are
not the traditional Homeric epithets: godly Antenor, upright
Justice, reckless Outrage.
The papyrus
As noted by Frederic Kenyon, the papyrus was originally a roll
probably about seventeen feet long and about ten inches high,
written in the Ptolemaic period, with some Roman
characteristics that indicate a transition between styles,
somewhere around 50 BC. It reached England in about two
hundred torn fragments, the largest about twenty inches in
length and containing four and a half columns of writing, the
smallest being scraps with barely enough space for one or two

letters. The beginning and end sections were missing and the
damage done to the roll was not entirely the result of its recent
discovery. Kenyon gradually pieced the fragments together,
making three independent sections: the first, nine feet long with
twenty-two columns of writing; the next section, a little over
two feet long with six columns; the third, three and a half feet
long with ten columns a total length of almost fifteen feet and
thirty-nine columns. Friedrich Blass later pieced together some
of the still detached fragments and concluded that two of the
poems on the restored roll (Odes vi. and vii., as numbered by
Kenyon in the editio princeps) must be parts of a single ode (for
Lachon of Ceos) hence even today the poems can be found
numbered differently, with Jebb for example one of those
following Blass's lead and numbering the poems differently to
Kenyon from poem 8 onwards (Kenyon 9 = Jebb 8 and so on).
Note: 1 A better example of his descriptive reporting of a victory
can be found in fr. 10, honouring a runner who won two events
at the Isthmian games: "For when he had come to a halt at the
finishing line of the sprint, panting out a hot storm of breath,
and again when he had wet with his oil the cloaks of the
spectators as he tumbled into the packed crowd after rounding
the course with its four turns, the spokesmen of the wise judges
twice proclaimed him Isthmian victor..." (translation by David
Campbell, Greek Lyric IV, Loeb (1992), page 172)
*