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William Smith,
A Smaller History of Ancient Greece|
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CHAPTER XXII
Sketch of the History of Greek Literature from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Alexander the Great
Cf. A Short History of Greek Philosophy
Page 5
ALCAEUS and SAPPHO were both natives of Mytilene in the island of Lesbos, and flourished about B.C. 610-580. Their songs were composed for a single voice, and not for the chorus, and they were each the inventor of a new metre, which bears their name, and is familiar to us by the well-known odes of Horace. Their poetry was the warm outpouring of the writers' inmost feelings, and present the lyric poetry of the AEolians at its highest point.
Alcaeus took an active part in the civil dissensions of his native state, and warmly espoused the cause of the aristocratical party, to which he belonged by birth. When the nobles were driven into exile, he endeavoured to cheer their spirits by a number of most animated odes, full of invectives against the popular party and its leaders.
Of the events of Sappho's life we have scarcely any information; and the common story that, being in love with Phaon and finding her love unrequited, she leaped down from the Leucadian rock, seems to have been an invention of later times.
ANACREON was a native of the Ionian city of Teos. He spent part of his life at Samos, under the patronage of Polycrates; and after the death of this despot he went to Athens at the invitation of Hipparchus. The universal tradition of antiquity represents Anacreon as a consummate voluptuary; and his poems prove the truth of the tradition. His death was worthy of his life, if we may believe the account that he was choked by a grape-stone.
SIMONIDES, of the island of Ceos, was born B.C. 556, and reached a great age. He lived many years at Athens, both at the court of Hipparchus, together with Anacreon, and subsequently under the democracy during the Persian wars. The struggles of Greece for her independence furnished him with a noble subject for his muse. He carried away the prize from AEschylus with an elegy upon the warriors who had fallen at the battle of Marathon. Subsequently we find him celebrating the heroes of Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, and Plataea. He was upwards of 80 when his long poetical career at Athens was closed with the victory which he gained with the dithyrambic chorus in B.C. 477, making the 56th prize that he had carried off. Shortly after this event he repaired to Syracuse at the invitation of Hiero. Here he spent the remaining ten years of his life, not only entertaining Hiero with his poetry, but instructing him by his wisdom; for Simonides was a philosopher as well as a poet, and is reckoned amongst the sophists.
Back to the History of [Ancient] Greece Contents
The Greek Word Library * Cf. R. W. Livingstone, On the Ancient Greek Literature
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/history-of-ancient-greece-22-literature.asp?pg=5
