Simonides of Ceos

[5] In the words of the Roman rhetorician Quintilian (35–100 AD): Simonides has a simple style, but he can be commended for the aptness of his language and for a certain charm; his chief merit, however, lies in the power to excite pity, so much so that some prefer him in this respect to all other writers of the genre.

"[9] Simonides was popularly accredited with the invention of four letters of the revised alphabet and, as the author of inscriptions, he was the first major poet who composed verses to be read rather than recited.

Carthaea, another Cean town, included a choregeion or school where choirs were trained, and possibly Simonides worked there as a teacher in his early years.

[15] Ceos lies only some fifteen miles south-east of Attica, whither Simonides was drawn, about the age of thirty, by the lure of opportunities opening up at the court of the tyrant Hipparchus, a patron of the arts.

Fond of drinking, convivial company and vain displays of wealth, this aristocrat's proud and capricious dealings with Simonides are demonstrated in a traditional account related by Cicero[19] and Quintilian,[20] according to which the poet was commissioned to write a victory ode for a boxer.

The Thessalian period in Simonides' career is followed in most biographies by his return to Athens during the Persian Wars and it is certain that he became a prominent international figure at that time,[22] particularly as the author of commemorative verses.

According to an anonymous biographer of Aeschylus,[23] the Athenians chose Simonides ahead of Aeschylus to be the author of an epigram honouring their war-dead at Marathon, which led the tragedian (who had fought at the battle and whose brother had died there) to withdraw sulking to the court of Hieron of Syracuse — the story is probably based on the inventions of comic dramatists[24] but it is likely that Simonides did in fact write some kind of commemorative verses for the Athenian victory at Marathon.

As mentioned above, both Cicero and Quintilian are sources for the story that Scopas, the Thassalian nobleman, refused to pay Simonides in full for a victory ode that featured too many decorative references to the mythical twins, Castor and Pollux.

Quintilian dismisses the story as a fiction because "the poet nowhere mentions the affair, although he was not in the least likely to keep silent on a matter which brought him such glory ..."[35] This however was not the only miraculous escape that his piety afforded him.

There are two epigrams in the Palatine Anthology, both attributed to Simonides and both dedicated to a drowned man whose corpse the poet and some companions are said to have found and buried on an island.

In his play Peace, Aristophanes imagined that the tragic poet Sophocles had turned into Simonides: "He may be old and decayed, but these days, if you paid him enough, he'd go to sea in a sieve.

"[46] According to an anecdote recorded on a papyrus, dating to around 250 BC, Hieron once asked the poet if everything grows old: "Yes," Simonides answered, "all except money-making; and kind deeds age most quickly of all.

[49] All these amusing anecdotes might simply reflect the fact that he was the first poet to charge fees for his services – generosity is glimpsed in his payment for an inscription on a friend's epitaph, as recorded by Herodotus.

"[57] Cicero related how, when Hieron of Syracuse asked him to define god, Simonides continually postponed his reply, "because the longer I deliberate, the more obscure the matter seems to me.

Very little of his poetry survives today but enough is recorded on papyrus fragments and in quotes by ancient commentators for many conclusions to be drawn at least tentatively (nobody knows if and when the sands of Egypt will reveal further discoveries).

These were extensions of the hymn, which previous generations of poets had dedicated only to gods and heroes: But it was Simonides who first led the Greeks to feel that such a tribute might be paid to any man who was sufficiently eminent in merit or in station.

— In one victory ode, celebrating Glaucus of Carystus, a famous boxer, Simonides declares that not even Heracles or Polydeuces could have stood against him—a statement whose impiety seemed notable even to Lucian many generations later.

[64] Simonides was the first to establish the choral dirge as a recognized form of lyric poetry,[65] his aptitude for it being testified, for example, by Quintillian (see quote in the Introduction), Horace ("Ceae ... munera neniae"),[66] Catullus ("maestius lacrimis Simonideis")[67] and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, where he says: Observe in Simonides his choice of words and his care in combining them; in addition—and here he is found to be better even than Pindar—observe how he expresses pity not by using the grand style but by appealing to the emotions.

)[72] Simonides has long been known to have written epitaphs for those who died in the Persian Wars and this has resulted in many pithy verses being mis-attributed to him "... as wise saws to Confucius or musical anecdotes to Beecham.

[76] Substantial fragments of a recently discovered poem, describing the run-up to the Battle of Plataea and comparing Pausanias to Achilles, show that he actually did compose narrative accounts in elegiac meter.

[79] Like other lyric poets in late Archaic Greece, Simonides made notable use of compound adjectives and decorative epithets yet he is also remarkable for his restraint and balance.

An example is found in a quote by Stobaeus[80] paraphrased here to suggest the original Aeolic verse rhythms, predominantly choriambic ( ¯˘˘¯, ¯˘˘¯ ), with some dactylic expansion (¯˘˘¯˘˘¯) and an iambic close (˘¯,˘¯): Being a man you cannot tell what might befall when tomorrow comes Nor yet how long one who appears blessed will remain that way, So soon our fortunes change even the long-winged fly Turns around less suddenly.

[82] Simonides championed a tolerant, humanistic outlook that celebrated ordinary goodness, and recognized the immense pressures that life places on human beings.

So I'm not going to throw away my dole of life on a vain, empty hope, searching for something there cannot be, a completely blameless man—at least not among us mortals who win our bread from the broad earth.

<ἐμοὶ ἀρκέει> μητ' <ἐὼν> ἀπάλαμνος εἰ- δώς τ' ὀνησίπολιν δίκαν, ὑγιὴς ἀνήρ· οὐ<δὲ μή νιν> ἐγώ μωμήσομαι· τῶν γὰρ ἠλιθίων ἀπείρων γενέθλα.

τοὔνεκεν οὔ ποτ' ἐγὼ τὸ μὴ γενέσθαι δυνατὸν διζήμενος κενεὰν ἐς ἄ- πρακτον ἐλπίδα μοῖραν αἰῶνος βαλέω, πανάμωμον ἄνθρωπον, εὐρυεδέος ὅσοι καρπὸν αἰνύμεθα χθονός· ἐπὶ δ' ὔμμιν εὑρὼν ἀπαγγελέω.