Mimnermus

He was strongly influenced by Homer, yet he wrote short poems suitable for performance at drinking parties and was remembered by ancient authorities chiefly as a love poet.

[6] The Suda's mention of Astypalaea, an island in the southern Aegean, as a possible candidate for the poet's home town is mere fantasy.

Solon clearly admired the skills of the older poet, whom he addressed as Ligyaistades, yet he objected to his hedonism and singled out this couplet for criticism: αἲ γὰρ ἄτερ νούσων τε καὶ ἀργαλέων μελεδωνέων

Plutarch was another ancient author critical of the poet's self-indulgence, dismissing one poem (see Fragment 1 in Poetic style below) as "the utterances of intemperate people.

Archaic elegy was often used for patriotic purposes, to screw courage to the sticking place in times of war and to celebrate national achievements, and there is ample evidence that Mimnermus assumed this role as a poet.

A quote recorded by the geographer Strabo represents the earliest surviving account of the Ionian migration, celebrating the settlement of Colophon and Smyrna from Pylos,[12] [13] while another quotation, recorded by Stobaeus, describes the heroic exploits of a Greek warrior against the cavalry of the Lydian king, Gyges, early in the 7th century—Mimnermus evidently hoped thereby to strengthen his countrymen's resolve against further Lydian encroachments.

[23] Ancient accounts associate Mimnermus with a female aulos player, Nanno (Ναννώ), and one makes him her lover (see quote from Hermesianax in Comments by other poets below).

[26] According to the poet Hipponax, Mimnermus when piping used the melancholy "fig-branch strain," apparently a traditional melody played while scapegoats were ritually driven from town, whipped with fig branches.

Homer's vocabulary, line-endings, formulas, similes, all reappear, but from this material Mimnermus creates quite a distinctive poetry of easy grace and pleasing rhythm.

Typically, the elegiac couplet enabled a poet to develop his ideas in brief, striking phrases, often made more memorable by internal rhyme in the shorter, pentameter line.

Commenting on the poem, Maurice Bowra observed that "...after the challenging, flaunting opening we are led through a swift account of youth, and then as we approach the horrors of old age, the verse becomes slower, the sentences shorter, the stops more emphatic, until the poet closes with a short, damning line of summary.

ἀλλ᾽ εἴ μοι κἂν νῦν ἔτι πείσεαι, ἔξελε τοῦτον:— μηδὲ μέγαιρ᾽ ὅτι σεῦ λῷον ἐπεφρασάμην:— καὶ μεταποίησον, Λιγυαιστάδη, ὧδε δ᾽ ἄειδε: ὀγδωκονταέτη μοῖρα κίχοι θανάτου.