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Alcaeus (Alkaios, Greek: Ἀλκαῖος) of Mytilene (c. 620 – 6th century BC), Ancient Greek lyric poet who supposedly invented the Alcaic verse. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. He was an older contemporary and an alleged lover of Sappho, with whom he may have exchanged poems. He was born into the aristocratic governing class of Mytilene, the main city of Lesbos, where he was involved in political disputes and feuds. The broad outlines of the poet's life are well known. He was born into the aristocratic, warrior class that dominated Mytilene, the strongest city - state on the island of Lesbos and, by the end of the seventh century B.C., the most influential of all the Asiatic Greek cities, with a strong navy and colonies securing its trade routes in the Hellespont. The city had long been ruled by kings born to the Penthilid clan but, during the poet's life, the Penthilids were a spent force and rival aristocrats and their factions contended with each other for supreme power. Alcaeus and his older brothers were passionately involved in the struggle but experienced little success. Their political adventures can be understood in terms of three tyrants who came and went in succession:
Sometime before 600 BC, Mytilene fought Athens for control of Sigeion and Alcaeus was old enough to participate in the fighting. According to the historian Herodotus, the poet threw away his shield to make good his escape from the victorious Athenians then celebrated the occasion in a poem that he later sent to his friend, Melanippus. It is thought that Alcaeus traveled widely during his years in exile, including at least one visit to Egypt. His older brother, Antimenidas, appears to have served as a mercenary in the army of Nebuchadnezzar II and probably took part in the conquest of Judaea and the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC. Alcaeus wrote verses in celebration of Antimenides' return, including mention of his valor in slaying a Goliath like opponent (frag. 350), and he proudly describes the military hardware that adorned their family home (frag. 357).
Alcaeus was a contemporary and a countryman of Sappho
and, since both poets composed for the entertainment of Mytilenean
friends, they had many opportunities to associate with each other on a
quite regular basis, such as at the Kallisteia, an annual festival celebrating the island's federation under Mytilene, held at the 'Messon' (referred to as temenos
in fr.s 129 and 130), where Sappho performed publicly with female
choirs. Alcaeus' reference to Sappho in terms more typical of a
divinity, as holy/pure, honey - smiling Sappho (fr. 384), may owe its inspiration to her performances at the festival.
The Lesbian or Aeolic school of poetry "reached in the songs of Sappho
and Alcaeus that high point of brilliancy to which it never afterwards
approached"
and it was assumed by later Greek critics and during the early
centuries of the Christian era that the two poets were in fact lovers, a
theme which became a favorite subject in art (as in the urn pictured
above). The poetic works of Alcaeus were collected into ten books, with elaborate commentaries, by the Alexandrian scholars Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace sometime in the 3rd century BC, and yet his verses today exist only in fragmentary form, varying in size from mere phrases, such as wine, window into a man (fr.333) to entire groups of verses and stanzas, such as those quoted below (fr.346). Alexandrian scholars numbered him in their canonic nine (one lyric poet per Muse). Among these, Pindar was held by many ancient critics to be pre-eminent, but some gave precedence to Alcaeus instead. The canonic nine are traditionally divided into two groups, with Alcaeus, Sappho and Anacreon, being 'monodists' or 'solo - singers', with the following characteristics:
The other six of the canonic nine composed verses for public occasions, performed by choruses and professional singers and typically featuring complex metrical arrangements that were never reproduced in other verses. However, this division into two groups is considered by some modern scholars to be too simplistic and often it is practically impossible to know whether a lyric composition was sung or recited, or whether or not it was accompanied by musical instruments and dance. Even the private reflections of Alcaeus, ostensibly sung at dinner parties, still retain a public function. Critics often seek to understand Alcaeus in comparison with Sappho:
The Roman poet, Horace, also compared the two, describing Alcaeus as "more full - throatedly singing". Alcaeus himself seems to underscore the difference between his own 'down - to - earth' style and Sappho's more 'celestial' qualities when he describes her almost as a goddess, and yet it has been argued that both poets were concerned with a balance between the divine and the profane, each emphasizing different elements in that balance. Dionysius of Halicarnassus
exhorts us to "Observe in Alcaeus the sublimity, brevity and sweetness
coupled with stern power, his splendid figures, and his clearness which
was unimpaired by the dialect; and above all mark his manner of
expressing his sentiments on public affairs," while Quintilian,
after commending Alcaeus for his excellence "in that part of his works
where he inveighs against tyrants and contributes to good morals; in his
language he is concise, exalted, careful and often like an orator;"
goes on to add: "but he descended into wantonnness and amours, though
better fitted for higher things." The works of Alcaeus are conventionally grouped according to five genres.
The following verses demonstrate some key characteristics of the Alcaic style (square brackets indicate uncertainties in the ancient text):
The Greek meter here is relatively simple, comprising the Greater Asclepiad, adroitly used to convey, for example, the rhythm of jostling cups (ἀ δ' ἀτέρα τὰν ἀτέραν).
The language of the poem is typically direct and concise and comprises
short sentences - the first line is in fact a model of condensed
meaning, comprising an exhortation ("Let's drink!), a rhetorical
question ("Why are we waiting for the lamps?") and a justifying
statement (Only an inch of daylight left.)
The meaning is clear and uncomplicated, the subject is drawn from
personal experience, and there is an absence of poetic ornament, such as
simile or metaphor. Like many of his poems (e.g. fr.s 38, 326, 338,
347, 350), it begins with a verb (in this case "Let's drink!") and it
includes a proverbial expression ("Only an inch of daylight left")
though it is possible that he coined it himself. Alcaeus rarely used metaphor or simile and yet he had a fondness for the allegory of the storm - tossed ship of state. The following fragment of a hymn to Castor and Polydeuces (the Dioscuri) is possibly another example of this though some scholars interpret it instead as a prayer for a safe voyage.
The poem was written in Sapphic stanzas,
a verse form popularly associated with his compatriot, Sappho, but in
which he too excelled, here paraphrased in English to suggest the same
rhythms. There were probably another three stanzas in the original poem but only nine letters of them remain. The 'far - away light' (Πήλοθεν λάμπροι) is a reference to St Elmo's Fire,
an electrical discharge supposed by ancient Greek mariners to be an
epiphany of the Dioscuri, but the meaning of the line was obscured by
gaps in the papyrus until reconstructed by a modern scholar — such
reconstructions are typical of the extant poetry. This poem doesn't begin with a verb but with an adverb (Δευτέ)
but still communicates a sense of action. He probably performed his
verses at drinking parties for friends and political allies — men for whom loyalty was essential, particularly in such troubled times. The Roman poet Horace modeled his own lyrical compositions on those of Alcaeus, rendering the Lesbian poet's verse forms, including 'Alcaic' and 'Sapphic' stanzas, into concise Latin - an achievement he celebrates in his third book of odes. In his second book, in an ode composed in Alcaic stanzas on the subject of an almost fatal accident he had on his farm, he imagines meeting Alcaeus and Sappho in Hades:
Ovid compared Alcaeus to Sappho in Letters of the Heroines, where Sappho is imagined to speak as follows:
The story of Alcaeus is partly the story of the scholars who rescued his work from oblivion. His verses have not come down to us through a manuscript tradition - generations of scribes copying an author's collected works, such as delivered intact into the modern age four entire books of Pindar's odes - but haphazardly, in quotes from ancient scholars and commentators whose own works have chanced to survive, and in the tattered remnants of papyri uncovered from an ancient rubbish pile at Oxyrhynchus and other locations in Egypt: sources that modern scholars have studied and correlated exhaustively, adding little by little to the world's store of poetic fragments. Ancient scholars quoted Alcaeus in support of various arguments. Thus for example Heraclitus 'The Allegorist' quoted fr.326 and part of fr.6, about ships in a storm, in his study on Homer's use of allegory. The hymn to Hermes, fr308(b), was quoted by Hephaestion (grammarian) and both he and Libanius, the rhetorician, quoted the first two lines of fr.350, celebrating the return from Babylon of Alcaeus' brother. The rest of fr.350 was paraphrased in prose by the historian / geographer Strabo. Many fragments were supplied in quotes by Athenaeus, principally on the subject of wine drinking, but fr.333, "wine, window into a man", was quoted much later by the Byzantine grammarian, John Tzetzes. The first 'modern' publication of Alcaeus' verses appeared in a Greek and Latin edition of fragments collected from the canonic nine lyrical poets by Michael Neander, published at Basle in 1556. This was followed by another edition of the nine poets, collected by Henricus Stephanus and published in Paris in 1560. Fulvius Ursinus compiled a fuller collection of Alcaic fragments, including a commentary, which was published at Antwerp in 1568. The first separate edition of Alcaeus was by Christian David Jani and it was published at Halle in 1780. The next separate edition was by August Matthiae, Leipzig 1827. Some of the fragments quoted by ancient scholars were able to be
integrated by scholars in the nineteenth century. Thus for example two
separate quotes by Athenaeus were united by Theodor Bergk
to form fr.362. Three separate sources were combined to form fr.350, as
mentioned above, including a prose paraphrase from Strabo that first
needed to be restored to its original meter, a synthesis achieved by the
united efforts of Otto Hoffmann, Karl Otfried Muller and Franz Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens. The discovery of the Oxyrhynchus papyri towards the end of the
nineteenth century dramatically increased the scope of scholarly
research. In fact, eight important fragments have now been compiled from
papyri - fr.s 9, 38A, 42, 45, 34(a), 129, 130 and most recently S262.
These fragments typically feature lacunae or gaps that scholars fill
with 'educated guesses', including for example a "brilliant supplement"
by Maurice Bowra in fr.34(a), a hymn to the Dioscuri that includes a description of St Elmo's fire
in the ship's rigging.
Working with only eight letters (pro...tr...ntes), Bowra conjured up a
phrase that brilliantly develops the meaning and the euphony of the poem
(proton' ontrechontes), describing luminescence "running along the
forestays". Bowra's ability to single out important information is
legendary and it is demonstrated in an anecdote about his days at
Oxford. He and some colleagues had stripped naked for a swim in the
river when they were surprised by a party of ladies out for a stroll.
Bowra's colleagues made haste to cover their private parts; Bowra merely
covered his head. Asked about this afterwards, the scholar observed: "I
don't know about you, gentlemen, but in Oxford I at least am known by
my face." |