Bacchylides

Bacchylides (5th century BC) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets, which included his uncle Simonides. His earliest odes can be approximately dated to 481 or 479 BC. He is known to have visited the court of Hiero I of Syracuse (478-467). Plutarch names Bacchylides in a list of writers who, after they had been banished from their native cities, were active and successful in literature. Quotations from Bacchylides, or references to him, occur in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Strabo, Plutarch, Stobaeus, Athenaeus, Aulus Gellius, Zenobius, Hephaestion, Clement of Alexandria, and various grammarians or scholiasts. Bacchylides poetry is known for its use of picturesque detail, its simplicity, and its clarity.

Herwig Maehler is Emeritus Professor of Papyrology at the Department of Greek and Latin, University College London. His publications include Die Auffassung des Dichterberufs im fruhen Griechentum bis zur Zeit Pindars (1963), Die Handschriften der S. Jacobi-Kirche Hamburg (1967), Urkunden romischer Zeit (1968), Papyri aus Hermupolis (1974), Die Lieder des Bakchylides (2 vols.) (1982, 1997); Greek Bookhands of the Early Byzantine Period (with G. Cavallo) 1987; editions of Bacchylides and Pindar.