Alcaeus

Alcaeus (Alkaios) of Mitylene (ca. 620 BC-6th century BC), Greek lyric poet, was an older contemporary and an alleged lover of Sappho, with whom he exchanged poems. He was of the aristocratic governing class of Mytilene, the main city of Lesbos, where his life was entangled with its political disputes and internal feuds. He sided with his class against the upstart "tyrants" who set themselves up in Mytilene as the voice of the people. He was in consequence obliged to spend a considerable time in exile. He is said to have become reconciled to Pittacus, the ruler set up by the populist party, and to have returned eventually to Lesbos. The date of his death is unknown.

When his poems were edited in Hellenistic Alexandria, they filled ten scrolls; the poetry of Alcaeus has survived only in quotations: "Fighting men are the city's fortress" and the like, so judging him, rather than his high reputation in antiquity, is like judging Ben Jonson through Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. The subjects of his poems, which were composed in the Aeolic Greek dialect, were of various kinds: hymns to the gods; martial or political comment, sometimes quite personal; and lastly love-songs and drinking-songs, the kind of poetry that would be read aloud at a symposium. Alexandrian scholars agreed that Alcaeus was the second greatest lyric poet among the canonic nine. The considerable number of fragments extant (see link), and the imitations of Alcaeus in Latin by Horace, who regarded Alcaeus as his great model, help us to form a fair idea of the character of his poems.

External link

• A. M. Miller, Greek Lyric: Alcaeus, many fragments.