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[German version] (σκόλιον; skólion). A Greek song at a symposium (Banquet). Unlike elegy, also sung at the symposium, it was accompanied by the lyre and was in lyric metre. The origin of the term is most likely the practice of holding a myrtle branch, which singers passed to each other in haphazard fashion (cf. Aristoph. fr. 444 PCG vol.3.2), though other far-fetched derivations were advanced, in particular from dýskolon ('difficult'), because inferior or drunken singers could not manage them (cf. Schol. Pl. Grg. 451e, Ath. 15,693f.-694c). First mention is in Pi…

[German version] (Μελιννώ; Melinnṓ). Greek female poet who composed a hymn in five Sapphic stanzas to the goddess Roma. Stobaeus (ecl. 3,7,12), who cites her, gives Lesbos as her place of origin, probably on account of the metre because there are only hints of an Aeolian dialect in het poetry. Her date is much disputed: most scholars propose the Republican period because - despite some similarities in images and ideas - there is no reason to suppose that she was influenced by Latin poetry and because she made no mention of the princeps [1]; others assign her to the 2nd cent. AD by poin…

(Σαπφώ/ Sapphṓ; in her self-designation, fr. 1: Ψάπφω/ Psápphō). Greek poet c. 600 BC. [German version] A. Life Lyric poet, born at Mytilene or Eresus on Lesbos. Was regularly synchronized in Antiquity with the poet Alcaeus [4] and the statesman Pittacus (e.g., Str. 13,617). The date recorded in the Suda s.v. Σ. - the 42nd Olympiad = 612-609 BC - could refer either to her birth or to her akme. The latter is the more likely and accords with the notice in the Marmor Parium that she went into exile in Sicily between 603/02 and 596/95 (FGrH 239,36), when she s…

(Σιμωνίδης/ Simōnídēs). [German version] [1] Iambographic poet (the iambographic poet) see Semonides Robbins, Emmet (Toronto) [German version] [2] Lyric poet, 6th/5th cents. BC Greek lyric poet, 6th/5th cents. BC Robbins, Emmet (Toronto) [German version] I. Life S. was born in Ioulis on Ceos [1], the son of Leoprepes, uncle of Bacchylides. Of the two birth dates given in the Suda - the 56th Olympiad (556/553 BC) and the 62nd Olympiad (532/529 BC), the earlier is generally accepted. According to the Suda, S. died in the 78th Olympi…

[German version] [1] Cyclades island (Μῆλος/ Mêlos, Doric Μᾶλος/ Mâlos; Latin Melos, modern Milos). Name of the westernmost of the Cyclades islands, the fifth largest at 161 km2. Included in the archipelago of M. are Kimolos off the northeastern point, Polaegus (modern Polivo) to the east, and Erimomilos to the west of M., plus a number of very small islands and rocks. M. is the caldera of a Pliocene volcano; its relics are still present today in the sulphurous thermal springs in the northeast and southeast. The sea has access to the caldera of the crater …

[German version] (Ἀργᾶς; Argâs). Poet and kitharist (first half of 4th cent. BC), from whom no fragments have remained. We know his name only from sources which allow one to assume a proverbially poor-quality poet: Plutarch mentions as a nickname of Demosthenes Ἀργᾶς, a poet of ‘poor and disgusting songs’ (νόμων πονηρῶν καὶ ἀργαλέων) and makes ἀργᾶς synonymous with ὄφις, serpent (Demosth. 4,8; cf. Hsch. s. v. ἀργᾶς 7013 Latte). There are some uncomplimentary references in Phaenias of Ephesus (FHG I…

[German version] (Ἑρμόλοχος; Hermólochos). Author of several lines regarding the imponderables and hopes of life. In Stob. 4,34,66 (also in Phot. Bibl. 167) he is called H. in two MSS, and Hermolaus in one MS. [1. 637] attributes this fragment to a Hermodotus and rearranges two verses; [2] maintains the attribution to H. but slightly changes the colometry. The dactyloepitritic verses show traces of the Doric in Stobaeus. Modern editors have made further conjectures with regard to the Doric elements. Robbins, Emmet (Toronto) Bibliography 1 Th. Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci III, 41882 2 …

(Λάσος; Lásos). [German version] [1] L. of Hermione Poet, c. 500 BC in the Argolis (incorrectly in the Suda: Achaia). The Suda places his date of birth in the 58th Oympiad. (548-544 BC). Like Anacreon and Simonides, this Greek poet was under the patronage of Hipparchus in Athens. According to Hdt. 7,6, Onomacritus was expelled by Hipparchus when L. caught him forging oracles of Musaeus. The Schol. Aristoph. Av. 1403 quotes authorities who consider L. the first organizer of dithyrambic choruses positione…

[German version] (Καστόρειον, sc. μέλος; Kastóreion mélos). A melody, named after Castor, sung by the Spartans, accompanied on the aulos, as they went off to battle. At the same time, the king started to sing the Embaterion (Plut. De musica 26,1140c; Plut. Lycurgus 22; Polyaenus, Strat. 1,10). The meter of these two martial airs was undoubtedly anapestic (Val. Max. 2,6,2). The association of Castor with horses (cf. Hom. Il. 3,237) establishes a connection between the kastoreion and the epinikion, especially on the occasion of horse competitions (Pind. Pyth. 2,69; Hyp…

(Φιλόξενος; Philóxenos). [German version] [1] Name of several officers under Alexander the Great Several officers with the name P. are mentioned in the sources about Alexander  [4] the Great. They cannot always be distinguished with certainty. One P. was appointed by Alexander in 331 BC (incorrect [1]) ' to collect tribute on this side of the Taurus'(i.e. in Asia Minor) (Arr. An. 3,6,4). This cannot be correct. Arrian must, as often, have expressed himself imprecisely, as this duty had already been entrusted to somebody else. It can also hardly be th…

[German version] (Λυκοφρονίδης; Lykophronídēs). Lyric poet, date and origin unknown. Two fragments are extant in Athenaeus, both come from the ‘Erotica’ of Clearchus [6]. Ath. 13,564a-b deals with modesty that is the basis of beauty; Ath. 15,670d-f is a poem of dedication by a shepherd who is in love; it has a slightly Doric coloration that is reminiscent of epideictic epigrams in which hunters offer up their hunting equipment (GA I 2, 34f.). The metre is idiosyncratic in both cases but is close to Ionic ( Metre). Robbins, Emmet (Toronto)

[German version] (Μεσομήδης; Mesomḗdēs). Cithara player and lyric poet from Crete, freedman of Hadrian (according to the Suda), main period of production AD 144 (according to Eusebius). Besides two poems in the Anthologia Palatina (14,63) and the Anthologia Planudea (16,323), 13 poems are transmitted by the manuscripts, four of which are provided with musical notation. They include hymns, animal fables, the description of a sponge and of a clock, as well as a poem on the manufacture of glass. There is a variety of metres, in particu…

[German version] (Ἀνακρεόντεια; Anakreónteia). A collection of poems, handed down in that manuscript of the 10th cent. AD which contains the  Anthologia Palatina. The poems were published for the first time in 1554 by Stephanus (Henri Estienne), who had seen the manuscript three years earlier in Louvain and had copied out the texts from it [1.178]. The copy made by Stephanus, today kept in Leiden, follows exactly the text of the poems in the MSS; however, his edition suppresses details which allow …

[German version] (Κλεόμαχος; Kleómachos). Kinaidographos, born in Magnesia, dates uncertain. According to Str. 14,1,41 he was a boxer who after falling in love with a kínaidos and a prostitute, whom he supported, began to write in the obscene language of the kínaidoi. Heph. Enchiridion 11,2 (= Consbruch 392,10-15) states that the Ionian acatalectic dimeter a maiore was called the Kleomacheion and that this verse form contained Molossian metre and choriambs. Hephaestion cites (as does Trichas ad loc. Consbruch 395,10) an example but neither is definitely…

[German version] (Ἀρίων; Aríōn). Lyric poet from Methymna on Lesbos. According to statements in the Suda, his akme was in Olympiad 38 (628-624 BC), and it is said there that he had been a pupil of  Alcman. Hdt. 1,23 reports that he had been the first person to compose a  dithyramb, and given it a name and performed it in Corinth. The mention in the Suda awards him the merit of being ‘the first to have put together a chorus, sung a dithyramb and to have given a name to that which the chorus sang, and to be the fi…

[German version] (Ὑβρίας; Hybrías). At the end of a collection of scholia, Ath. 695f adds a poem by H. of Crete, which ‘many consider to be a scholion ’ [1]. H. boasts of being the master of the public slaves (δεσπότας μνοΐας) and of earning a living as a soldier. The poem was formerly assumed to be a war song by a Doric nobleman, now is commonly regarded as the boasting of a man who comes from the class that he now rules [2]. A reference to the Persian Great King suggests the middle of the 6th cent. BC as terminus post quem. The two stanzas consist primarily of trochees, choriambs,and glyconics…

(Διαγόρας; Diagóras). [German version] [1] of Eretria Politician 6th cent. BC Towards the end of the 6th cent. BC (between 539 and 510?), D. overturned the ‘oligarchy of the knights’, allegedly for personal motives (Aristot. Pol. 5,5, 1306a 35-37) [1]. In posthumous tribute, a statue of D. was erected (Heraclides Lembus fr. 40 Dilts). Whether D. as nomothetes introduced a ‘democratic constitution’ [2], has to remain a moot point. Hölkeskamp, Karl-Joachim (Cologne) Bibliography 1 F. Geyer, Topographie und Gesch. der Insel Euboia 1, 1903, 66f. 2 H.-J. Gehrke, Stasis, 1985, 63f. …

[German version] [1] The Elder Lyric poet, 6th cent. BC (Ἀνακρέων [ Anakréōn], or for metrical reasons also Ἀνακρείων [ Anakreíōn]). Robbins, Emmet (Toronto) [German version] A. Life Writer of monodic lyrics and one of the nine authors who belong to the Alexandrian canon of the nine lyrical poets. A. was born in the town of Teos in Ionia; the details about the name of his father vary (Suda). The chronology of his life is also uncertain and is based on the assumption that he was a contemporary of Polycrates of Samos; for the akme of A. the date Olympiad 62/2 (531 BC) given by Eusebius is…

[German version] (Ἤριννα; Ḗrinna). Poet and author of a work known in antiquity as the ‘Distaff’ (Ἠλακάτη; Ēlakátē), a poem of 300 hexameters (Anon. Anth. Pal. 9,190,3). Eusebius indicates that her creative time was between 353 and 352 BC (= Ol. 106.4 or 107.1). The Suda, which erroneously made her into Sappho's contemporary, names several possible places of origin; the most probable being the island of Telos since she writes in Doric with the occasional Aeolism. The literary similarities with the works of  Ascl…

[German version] (Πράξιλλα/ Práxilla). Lyric poetess from Sicyon, chief date c. 451 BC. (Eusebius, Jer. Chron. Ol. 82,2). Author of hymns (747 PMG), dithyrambs (748 PMG) and skólia (749, 750 PMG). Two verses about a girl seen at a window (754 PMG) are written in the praxilleion metre, named after her; the beginning syllables can be found as inscriptions on a Boeotian vase from the middle of the 5th cent. Her treatment of myth was innovative: Dionysus was the son of Aphrodite and not Semele (752 PMG); Zeus, not Laius, kidnapped Chrysippus (7…