Bacchylides
Encyclopedia
Bacchylides (5th century BC) was an Ancient 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 a commonplace of Bacchylidean scholarship since at least Longinus
(De Sublimitate 33,5). Some scholars however have associated these qualities with 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.
, 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 524-1 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
, tyrant of Athens 527-14 BC. 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. Alexandria
n 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 (478-467) 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
.
, who probably restored them to their appropriate metres after finding them written in prose form. They were arranged in nine 'books', exemplifying the following genres (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):
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 fourth 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 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:
Fortunately for Bacchylidean scholarship, a papyrus came to light in Egypt at the end of the nineteenth 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 disguized 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."
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 "bronze-walled court" and "well-built halls" of Croesus
(Ode 3.30-31 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.
: "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 restored the papyrus poems, took an unsympathetic view of Bacchylides's treatment of myth in general:
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."
Bacchylides's image of the poet as an eagle winging across the sea was not original - Pindar had already used it earlier (Nemean Odes 5.20-21). 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 (1.1-2), "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 (375-83), and the countless leaves fluttering in the wind on "the gleaming headlands of Ida", mentioned later in the ode, recall a passage in Iliad
(6.146-9). 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 582-8).
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:
Ultimately, however, Bacchylides and Pindar share many of the same goals and techniques - the difference is largely one of temperament:
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).
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
lyric
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets
Nine lyric poets
The nine lyric poets were a canon of archaic Greek composers esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria as worthy of critical study.They were:*Alcman of Sparta...
which included his uncle Simonides
Simonides
* Simonides of Ceos, , a lyric poet* Semonides of Amorgos, an iambic poet* Flavius Simonides Agrippa, son of Roman Jewish Historian Josephus* Constantine Simonides, 19th-century forger of 'ancient' manuscripts...
. The elegance and polished style of his lyrics have been a commonplace of Bacchylidean scholarship since at least Longinus
Longinus (literature)
Longinus is the conventional name of the author of the treatise, On the Sublime , a work which focuses on the effect of good writing. Longinus, sometimes referred to as Pseudo-Longinus because his real name is unknown, was a Greek teacher of rhetoric or a literary critic who may have lived in the...
(De Sublimitate 33,5). Some scholars however have associated these qualities with superficial charm. He has often been compared unfavourably with his contemporary, Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...
, 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
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
." His career coincided with the ascendency of dramatic styles of poetry, as embodied in the works of Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
or Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
, 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
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
in general and to Pindar's verse in particular.
The life of Bacchylides
This simple precept, from one of Bacchylides' extant fragments, was considered by his modern editor, Richard Claverhouse JebbRichard Claverhouse Jebb
Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, OM, FBA was a British classical scholar and politician.He was born in Dundee, Scotland. His father was a well-known barrister, and his grandfather a judge...
, 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
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
and quoted by Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, but no trace of Bacchylides' work can be found until the Hellenistic age, when Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus 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 Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
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
Delos
The island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...
in The Aegean Sea, Thessaly
Thessaly
Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....
to the north of mainland Greece and Sicily or Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia
Magna Græcia is the name of the coastal areas of Southern Italy on the Tarentine Gulf that were extensively colonized by Greek settlers; particularly the Achaean colonies of Tarentum, Crotone, and Sybaris, but also, more loosely, the cities of Cumae and Neapolis to the north...
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
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
, he was born in Ioulis
Ioulis
Ioulis or Ioulida , locally called Khora like the main towns of most Greek islands and sometimes known by the island name of Kea or Keos , is the capital of the island of Kea in the Cyclades.-Modern town:...
, on the island of Ceos, and his mother was the sister of Simonides. According to Suda
Suda
The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...
, his father's name was Meidon and his grandfather, also named Bacchylides, was a famous athlete, yet according to Etymologicum Magnum
Etymologicum Magnum
Etymologicum Magnum is the traditional title of a Greek lexical encyclopedia compiled at Constantinople by an unknown lexicographer around 1150 AD. It is the largest Byzantine lexicon and draws on many earlier grammatical, lexical and rhetorical works...
his father's name was Meidylus. There is an ancient tradition, upheld for example by Eustathius
Eustathius
Eustathius or Eustathios may refer to:* Eustathius of Antioch, Patriarch of Antioch * Eustathius of Sebaste * Eustathius of Cappadocia Neoplatonist, orator, and diplomat...
and Thomas Magister
Thomas Magister
Thomas, surnamed Magister , also known as a monk by the name Theodulos Monachos, a native of Thessalonica, Byzantine scholar and grammarian and confidential adviser of Andronicus II Palaeologus ....
, that he was younger than Pindar and some modern scholars have endorsed it, such as Jebb
Richard Claverhouse Jebb
Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, OM, FBA was a British classical scholar and politician.He was born in Dundee, Scotland. His father was a well-known barrister, and his grandfather a judge...
, who assigns his birth to around 507 BC, whereas Bowra
Maurice Bowra
Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra was an English classical scholar and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1951 to 1954.-Birth and boyhood:...
, for example, opted for a much earlier date, around 524-1 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
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
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
Paean
A paean is a song or lyric poem expressing triumph or thanksgiving. In classical antiquity, it is usually performed by a chorus, but some examples seem intended for an individual voice...
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
Eusebius of Alexandria
Eusebius of Alexandria is an author to whom certain extant homilies are attributed.These homilies enjoyed some renown in the Eastern Church in the sixth and seventh centuries. Their homiletical merit does not rise above mediocrity, and nothing is known of the author. In all events, he was not a...
and Georgius Syncellus can be taken to indicate that Bacchylides might have been still alive at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BC, was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases...
, 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
Delos
The island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...
, the focal point of the Cyclades
Cyclades
The Cyclades is a Greek island group in the Aegean Sea, south-east of the mainland of Greece; and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The name refers to the islands around the sacred island of Delos...
and the principal sanctuary of the Ionian race
Ionians
The Ionians were one of the four major tribes into which the Classical Greeks considered the population of Hellenes to have been divided...
, 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
Athenaeus
Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...
, 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
Isthmian Games
The Isthmian Games or Isthmia were one of the Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece, and were named after the isthmus of Corinth, where they were held...
. Ceans had participated in the defeat of the Persians at the Battle of Salamis
Battle of Salamis
The Battle of Salamis was fought between an Alliance of Greek city-states and the Persian Empire in September 480 BCE, in the straits between the mainland and Salamis, an island in the Saronic Gulf near Athens...
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
Battle of Marathon
The Battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC, during the first Persian invasion of Greece. It was fought between the citizens of Athens, aided by Plataea, and a Persian force commanded by Datis and Artaphernes. It was the culmination of the first attempt by Persia, under King Darius I, to subjugate...
. 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
Hipparchus
Hipparchus, the common Latinization of the Greek Hipparkhos, can mean:* Hipparchus, the ancient Greek astronomer** Hipparchic cycle, an astronomical cycle he created** Hipparchus , a lunar crater named in his honour...
, tyrant of Athens 527-14 BC. 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
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
. 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
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
for the young prince, Alexander I
Alexander I of Macedon
- Biography :Alexander was the son of Amyntas I and Queen Eurydice.According to Herodotus, he was unfriendly to Persia, and had the envoys of Darius I killed when they arrived at the court of his father during the Ionian Revolt...
(fr. 20B). Soon he was competing with Pindar for commissions from the leading families of Aegina
Aegina
Aegina is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece in the Saronic Gulf, from Athens. Tradition derives the name from Aegina, the mother of Aeacus, who was born in and ruled the island. During ancient times, Aegina was a rival to Athens, the great sea power of the era.-Municipality:The municipality...
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
Pythian Games
The Pythian Games were one of the four Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece, a forerunner of the modern Olympic Games, held every four years at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi....
(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. Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
n 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 (478-467) 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
Syracuse, Italy
Syracuse is a historic city in Sicily, the capital of the province of Syracuse. The city is notable for its rich Greek history, culture, amphitheatres, architecture, and as the birthplace of the preeminent mathematician and engineer Archimedes. This 2,700-year-old city played a key role in...
.
Bacchylides's poetry - how it survived
The poems were collected into critical editions sometime in the late third century B.C. by the Alexandrian scholar, Aristophanes of ByzantiumAristophanes of Byzantium
Aristophanes of Byzantium was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus,...
, who probably restored them to their appropriate metres after finding them written in prose form. They were arranged in nine 'books', exemplifying the following genres (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):
- dithyrambDithyrambThe dithyramb was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god: Plato, in The Laws, while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb." Plato also...
s - paeanPaeanA paean is a song or lyric poem expressing triumph or thanksgiving. In classical antiquity, it is usually performed by a chorus, but some examples seem intended for an individual voice...
s - hymnHymnA hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
s - prosodiaProsodionNot to be confused with prosodyProsodion in ancient Greece was a processional song to the altar of a deity, mainly Apollo or Artemis, sung ritually before the Paean hymn. Prosodia had been composed by Eumelus of Corinth and Limenius, as well the various winners in art competitions...
- partheneia
- hyporchemaHyporchemaThe hyporchema was a lively kind of mimic dance which accompanied the songs used in the worship of Apollo, especially among the Dorians. It was performed by men and women...
ta - epinikiansEpinikionThe epinikion or epinicion is a genre of occasional poetry also known in English as a victory ode...
- erotica
- encomiaEncomiumEncomium is a Latin word deriving from the Classical Greek ἐγκώμιον meaning the praise of a person or thing. "Encomium" also refers to several distinct aspects of rhetoric:* A general category of oratory* A method within rhetorical pedagogy...
The Alexandrian grammarian Didymus
Didymus Chalcenterus
Didymus Chalcenterus , ca. 63 BCE to 10 CE, was a Hellenistic Greek scholar and grammarian who flourished in the time of Cicero and Augustus.- Life :...
(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 fourth century also: Ammianus Marcellinus
Ammianus Marcellinus
Ammianus Marcellinus was a fourth-century Roman historian. He wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Antiquity...
(xxv. 4) observed that the emperor Julian
Julian the Apostate
Julian "the Apostate" , commonly known as Julian, or also Julian the Philosopher, was Roman Emperor from 361 to 363 and a noted philosopher and Greek writer....
enjoyed reading Bacchylides, and the largest collection of quotations that survived up until the modern era was assembled by Stobaeus
Stobaeus
Joannes Stobaeus , from Stobi in Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was originally divided into two volumes containing two books each...
(early 5th century 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
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
, Pindar, Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
, Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus 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 Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
. 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 HalicarnassusDionysius of HalicarnassusDionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
- frag. 11 - StraboStraboStrabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
- notice 57 - PlutarchPlutarchPlutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
- frag. 29 - Apollonius DyscolusApollonius DyscolusApollonius Dyscolus is considered one of the greatest of the Greek grammarians. He was born at Alexandria, son of Mnesitheus. The dates for his life are not known...
- frag. 31 - ZenobiusZenobiusZenobius was a Greek sophist, who taught rhetoric at Rome during the reign of Emperor Hadrian .-Biography:He was the author of a collection of proverbs in three books, still extant in an abridged form, compiled, according to the Suda, from Didymus of Alexandria and "The Tarrhaean"...
- frag.s 5, 24 - HephaestionHephaestion (grammarian)Hephaestion was a grammarian of Alexandria who flourished in the age of the Antonines. He was the author of a manual of Greek metres, which is most valuable as the only complete treatise on the subject that has been preserved. The concluding chapter discusses the various kinds of poetical...
- frag.s 12, 13, 15 - AthenaeusAthenaeusAthenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...
- frag.s 13, 16, 17, 18, 22 - Clement of AlexandriaClement of AlexandriaTitus Flavius Clemens , known as Clement of Alexandria , was a Christian theologian and the head of the noted Catechetical School of Alexandria. Clement is best remembered as the teacher of Origen...
- frag.s 19, 20, 21, 32 - StobaeusStobaeusJoannes Stobaeus , from Stobi in Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was originally divided into two volumes containing two books each...
- frag.s 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20, 28 - PriscianPriscianPriscianus Caesariensis , commonly known as Priscian, was a Latin grammarian. He wrote the Institutiones grammaticae on the subject...
- frag. 27 - Johannes Siceliota - frag. 26
- Etymologicum MagnumEtymologicum MagnumEtymologicum Magnum is the traditional title of a Greek lexical encyclopedia compiled at Constantinople by an unknown lexicographer around 1150 AD. It is the largest Byzantine lexicon and draws on many earlier grammatical, lexical and rhetorical works...
- frag.s 25, 30 - Palatine AnthologyPalatine AnthologyThe Palatine Anthology is the collection of Greek poems and epigrams discovered in 1606 in the Palating Library in Heidelberg. It is based on the lost collection of Constantine Cephalas of the 10th century, which has been composed using older anthologies. It contains material from the 7th century...
- frag.s 33, 34.
Fortunately for Bacchylidean scholarship, a papyrus came to light in Egypt at the end of the nineteenth 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 disguized 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
Friedrich Blass
Friedrich Blass was a German classical scholar.After studying at Göttingen and Bonn from 1860 to 1863, he lectured at several gymnasia and at the University of Königsberg. In 1876 he was appointed extraordinary professor of classical philology at Kiel, and ordinary professor in 1881...
in Germany and then followed the authoritative edition of Bacchylides' poetry by Richard Claverhouse Jebb
Richard Claverhouse Jebb
Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, OM, FBA was a British classical scholar and politician.He was born in Dundee, Scotland. His father was a well-known barrister, and his grandfather a judge...
- 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
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.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
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BC, was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases...
, 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
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
and Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
, 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
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
(who imitated him, according to Pomponius Porphyrion
Pomponius Porphyrion
Pomponius Porphyrion was a Latin grammarian and commentator on Horace, possibly a native of Africa, who flourished during the 2nd or 3rd century....
, in Carmen I. 15, where Nereus
Nereus
In Greek mythology, Nereus was the eldest son of Pontus and Gaia , a Titan who with Doris fathered the Nereids, with whom Nereus lived in the Aegean Sea. In the Iliad the Old Man of the Sea is the father of Nereids, though Nereus is not directly named...
predicts the destruction of Troy
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
). These narrative qualities were modelled largely on the work of Stesichorus
Stesichorus
Stesichorus was the first great poet of the Greek West. He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres but he is also famous for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to the tyrant Phalaris, and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing...
, 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 "bronze-walled court" and "well-built halls" of Croesus
Croesus
Croesus was the king of Lydia from 560 to 547 BC until his defeat by the Persians. The fall of Croesus made a profound impact on the Hellenes, providing a fixed point in their calendar. "By the fifth century at least," J.A.S...
(Ode 3.30-31 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
Nereids
In Greek mythology, the Nereids are sea nymphs, the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris, sisters to Nerites. They often accompany Poseidon and can be friendly and helpful to sailors fighting perilous storms. They are particularly associated with the Aegean Sea, where they dwelt with their father...
(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
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
by the withdrawal of Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
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 WeilHenri Weil
Henri Weil was a German-born French Jewish philologist.He was educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Leipzig. He went to France, and continued his studies at Paris, graduating as "docteur ès lettres" in 1845, and becoming "agrégé" in 1848...
: "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
Epinikion
The epinikion or epinicion is a genre of occasional poetry also known in English as a victory ode...
genre. Whereas however Pindar's ode focuses on the myth of Pelops
Pelops
In Greek mythology, Pelops , was king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus. He was the founder of the House of Atreus through his son of that name....
and Tantalus
Tantalus
Tantalus was the ruler of an ancient western Anatolian city called either after his name, as "Tantalís", "the city of Tantalus", or as "Sipylus", in reference to Mount Sipylus, at the foot of which his city was located and whose ruins were reported to be still visible in the beginning of the...
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
Meleager
In Greek mythology, Meleager was a hero venerated in his temenos at Calydon in Aetolia. He was already famed as the host of the Calydonian boar hunt in the epic tradition that was reworked by Homer....
and Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
, 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
Frederic G. Kenyon
Sir Frederic George Kenyon GBE KCB TD FBA FSA was a British paleographer and biblical and classical scholar. He occupied from 1889 to 1931 a series of posts at the British Museum...
, who restored the papyrus poems, took an unsympathetic view of Bacchylides's treatment of myth in general:
Bacchylides however might be better understood as an heir to Stesichorus
Stesichorus
Stesichorus was the first great poet of the Greek West. He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres but he is also famous for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to the tyrant Phalaris, and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing...
, 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 5.16-33)
- So now for me too countless paths extend in all directions
-
Bacchylides's image of the poet as an eagle winging across the sea was not original - Pindar had already used it earlier (Nemean Odes 5.20-21). In fact, in the same year that both poets celebrated Pherenicus's Olympic victory, Pindar also composed an ode for Theron of Acragas
Theron of Acragas
Theron , son of Aenesidamus, was a Greek tyrant of the town of Acragas in Sicily from 488 BC. He soon became an ally of Gelo, who at that time controlled Gela, and from 485 BC Syracuse. Gelo later became Theron's son-in-law....
(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 (1.1-2), "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 (375-83), and the countless leaves fluttering in the wind on "the gleaming headlands of Ida", mentioned later in the ode, recall a passage in Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
(6.146-9). 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
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
(Works and Days 582-8).
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:
-
-
- When Pherenicos with his auburn mane
- ran like the wind
- beside the eddies of broad Alpheios,
- EosEosIn Greek mythology, Eos is the Titan goddess of the dawn, who rose from her home at the edge of Oceanus, the ocean that surrounds the world, to herald her brother Helios, the Sun.- Greek literature :...
, with her arms all golden, saw his victory,
- Eos
- 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 5.37-49)
- When Pherenicos with his auburn mane
-
Ultimately, however, Bacchylides and Pindar share many of the same goals and techniques - the difference is largely one of temperament:
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 BlassFriedrich Blass
Friedrich Blass was a German classical scholar.After studying at Göttingen and Bonn from 1860 to 1863, he lectured at several gymnasia and at the University of Königsberg. In 1876 he was appointed extraordinary professor of classical philology at Kiel, and ordinary professor in 1881...
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
Editio princeps
In classical scholarship, editio princeps is a term of art. It means, roughly, the first printed edition of a work that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which could be circulated only after being copied by hand....
) 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).
Further reading
- Barrett, W. S.Spencer BarrettSpencer Barrett FBA, was an English classical scholar, Fellow and Sub-Warden of Keble College, Oxford, and Reader in Greek Literature in the University of Oxford...
, Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism: Collected Papers, edited for publication by M. L. West (Oxford & New York, 2007): papers dealing with Bacchylides, StesichorusStesichorusStesichorus was the first great poet of the Greek West. He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres but he is also famous for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to the tyrant Phalaris, and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing...
, PindarPindarPindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...
, and EuripidesEuripidesEuripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
External links
- Works by Bacchylides at the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
- Poems by Bacchylides English translations