Page "Alcaeus of Mytilene" Paragraph 22

* Hymns: Alcaeus sang about the gods in the spirit of the Homeric hymns, to entertain his companions rather than to glorify the gods and in the same meters that he used for his ' secular ' lyrics.

There are for example fragments in ' Sapphic ' meter praising the Dioscuri, Hermes and the river Hebrus ( a river significant in Lesbian mythology since it was down its waters that the head of Orpheus was believed to have floated singing, eventually crossing the sea to Lesbos and ending up in a temple of Apollo, as a symbol of Lesbian supremacy in song ).

According to Porphyrion, the hymn to Hermes was imitated by Horace in one of his own ' sapphic ' odes ( C. 1. 10: Mercuri, facunde nepos Atlantis ).