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BACCHYLIDES which agrees sufficiently well with the few facts which can Bacchylides. The passage gives no clue to date or circumbe gleaned concerning his life. Among his odes found in stance ; but it implies that Peloponnesus was the region 1896 the earliest that can be approximately dated is xiii. where the poet’s genius ripened, and where he did the (ed. Kenyon), which may belong to 479 or 477 b.c. ; the work which established his fame. This points to a residlatest is vi., of which the date is fixed by the recently- ence of considerable length; and it may be noted that found fragment of the Olympic register to 01. 82. 1 (452 some of the poems illustrate their author’s intimate knowb.c.). He would thus have been some thirty-nine years ledge of Peloponnesus. Thus in Ode ix., for Automedes younger than his uncle Simonides, and some fifteen years of Phlius, he draws on the legends connected with the younger than Pindar. Phliasian river Asopus. In Ode x., starting from the Elsewhere Eusebius states that Bacchylides “was of Argive legend of Proetus and Acrisius, he tells how the repute ” (eyvcjptfcro) in 01. 87. 2 (431 b.c.) ; and Georgius Arcadian cult of Artemis 'Hpepa was founded. In one of Syncellus, using the same word, gives 01. 88 (428-25 B.c.). his dithyrambs (xx.) he treated the legend of Idas (a The phrase would mean that he was then in the fulness of Messenian hero) and Marpessa in the form of a hymenaem years and of fame. We have no other evidence; but there sung by maidens of Sparta. is nothing improbable in the supposition that he survived The Alexandrian scholars, who drew up select lists of the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. the best writers in each kind, included Bacchylides in their Bacchylides, like Simonides and Pindar, visited the “canon” of the nine lyric poets, along with Aleman, court of Hieron, who ruled Syracuse from 478 to his death Sappho, Alcaeus, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides, in 467. In his fifth ode (476 B.c.), the word ghos (v. 11) and Pindar. The Alexandrian grammarian Didymus (circ. has been taken to mean that he had already been the guest 30 B.c.) wrote a commentary {vTropvrjpa) on the epinikian of the prince; and, as Simonides went to Sicily in or odes of Bacchylides. Horace, a poet in some respects of about 477 b.c., that is not unlikely. Ode hi. (468 B.c.) kindred genius, was a student of his works, and imitated was possibly written at Syracuse, as verses 15 and 16 him (according to Porphyrion) in Ode i. 15, where Proteus suggest. He there pays a high compliment to Hieron’s predicts the destruction of Troy. Quotations from taste in poetry (ver. 3 ffi). A scholium on Pyth. i. 166 Bacchylides, or references to him, occur in Dionysius of avers that Hieron preferred the odes of Bacchylides to Halicarnassus, Strabo, Plutarch, Stobaeus, Athenaeus, those of Pindar. The Alexandrian scholars interpreted a Aulus Gellius, Zenobius, Hephaestion, Clement of Alexnumber of passages in Pindar as hostile allusions to andria, and various grammarians or scholiasts. Ammianus Bacchylides or Simonides. If the scholiasts are right, it Marcellinus (xxv. 4) says that the Emperor Julian enjoyed would appear that Pindar regarded the younger of the reading Bacchylides. It is clear, then, that this poet two Cean poets as a jealous rival, who disparaged him to continued to be popular during at least the first four their common patron (schol. Pyth. ii. 52 f.), and as one centuries of our era. No inference adverse to his repute whose poetical skill was due to study rather than to genius can fairly be drawn from the fact that no mention of him (OL 2. 91-110). In Olymp. ii. 96 the dual yapuerov, if it occurs in the extant work of any Attic writer. The only does not refer to the uncle and nephew, remains mysterious; definite estimate of him by an ancient critic occurs in the nor does it admit of probable emendation. One would treatise Hept tji/'ou?,commonly translated “On the Sublime,” gladly reject this tradition, to which the scholia so but meaning rather, “ On the sources of elevation in frequently refer; yet it would be rash to assume that it style ”; a work ambiguously ascribed to Cassius Longinus rested merely on surmise. The Alexandrians may have (circ. a.d. 260), but more probably due to some writer of possessed evidence on the subject which is now lost. It is the first century. In chapter xxxiii. of that treatise, the tolerably certain that the three poets were visitors at author asks whether we ought to prefer “greatness” in Hieron’s court at about the same time : Pindar and Bacchy- literature, with some attendant faults, to flawless merit on lides wrote odes of the same kind in his honour; and there a lower level, and of course replies in the affirmative. In was a tradition that he preferred the younger poet. There tragedy, he asks, who would be Ion of Chios rather than is thus no intrinsic improbability in the hypothesis that Sophocles; or in lyric poetry, Bacchylides rather than Pindar’s haughty spirit had suffered, or imagined, some Pindar 1 Yet Bacchylides and Ion are “ faultless, with a mortification. It is noteworthy that, whereas in 476 and style of perfect elegance and finish.” In short, the essayist 470 both he and Bacchylides celebrated Hieron’s victories, regards Bacchylides as a thoroughly finished poet of the in 468 (the most important occasion of all) Bacchylides second class, who never commits glaring faults, but never alone was commissioned to do so; although in that year reaches the loftier heights. Pindar composed an ode {Olymp. vi.) for another Syracusan The first and most general quality of style in Bacchylides victor at the same festival. Nor is it difficult to conceive is his perfect simplicity and clearness. Where the text is that a despot such as Hieron, whose constitutional position not corrupt, there are few sentences which are not lucid in was ill-defined, and who was perhaps all the more exigent meaning and simple in structure. This lucidity is partly of deference on that account, may have found the genial due, no doubt, to the fact that he seldom attempts imagery Ionian a more agreeable courtier than Pindar, an aristocrat of the bolder kind, and never has thoughts of a subtle or of the Boeoto-Aeolic type, not unmindful of “his fathers complex order. Yet it would be very unjust to regard the Aegeidae,” and rather prone to link the praises of his such clearness as merely a compensatory merit of lyric patron with a lofty intimation of his own claims (see, e.g., mediocrity, or to ignore its intimate connexion with the Olymp. i. ad Jin.). But, whatever may have been the true man’s native [ grace of mind, with the artist’s feeling bearing of Pindar’s occasional innuendoes, it is at any rate for expression, with the poet’s delicate skill. How many pleasant to find that in the extant work of Bacchylides readers, who could enjoy and appreciate Pindar if he were there is not the faintest semblance of hostile allusion to less difficult, are stopped on the threshold by the aspect any rival. Nay, one might almost imagine a compliment of his style, and are fain to save their self-esteem by conto Pindar, when, in mentioning Hesiod, he calls him cluding that he is at once turgid and shallow ! A pellucid Botwros dv/jp. style must always have been a source of wide, though Plutarch (de Pxilio, p. 605 c) names our poet in a list modest, popularity for Bacchylides. If it be true that of writers who, after they had been banished from their Hieron preferred him to Pindar, and that he was a native cities, were active and successful in literature. It favourite with Julian, those instances suggest the charm was Peloponnesus that afforded a new home to the exiled which he must always have had for cultivated readers to
